Review: Crazy Raider for iOS

The new Tomb Raider reboot has been all over the press recently for its brave reinvention of a '90s cultural icon.

Crazy Raider's Stogie is another kind of reimagined tomb raider entirely. He's a big ugly lunk who shoots first, loots second, and asks questions, well, never.

Unfortunately, Crazy Raider's gameplay is as prosaic as its protagonist.

Tomb invader

Deposited in the middle of a compact Egyptian-themed arena, you're soon assailed from all sides by a variety of shuffling mummies. Fortunately, you have a very big gun and unlimited ammo.

So, it's a twin-stick shooter, right? Not quite.

While you do indeed move with virtual D-pad on the left-hand side of the screen, shooting is a hugely simplified affair. All you have to do is press a virtual 'shoot' button and Stogie will automatically target the nearest enemy.

This proves to be both overly simplistic and irritating, at least initially. When you're surrounded by baddies it can be a bit of a lottery which one you'll be targeting, which takes a lot of the skill out of an already simplistic game.

Pyramid scheme

Soon you'll realise that Crazy Raider doesn't want you to be particularly deft or skilful. It wants to work you up into a frenzy of mindless action.

IAPs explained You'll need coins to purchase the weapon enhancements, which in turn are the key to getting really high scores. Obviously, you won't be able to earn enough from within the game itself to sustain the usage of these power-ups. £1.49 gets you 2,000 coins, which can buy you two goes with the most expensive power-up. After that, you have £6.99 for 20,000 and an eye-watering £20.99 for 50,000.

The goal here is not to shoot everything that moves - it's to collect as many diamonds and coins as possible. It just so happens that downed enemies are the most reliable source of said currencies.

There's something quite compelling about chasing after glowing objects. This attraction is bolstered by the fact that collecting three gold or purple diamonds gets you a big fat combo bonus.

At the end of the stage you can purchase one of three enhancements to your gun, but again the goal here isn't to make shooting things more fun - it's to make collecting stuff quicker and more efficient.

Primitive artifact

While you'll come to appreciate Crazy Raider's subtle shift in the arena shooter formula, it's still an incredibly simplistic game.

There are no levels to work through, just a single arena which you return to time and time again, striving to best your highscore. However fun you find the core game, this grows boring fairly quickly.

Ultimately, we can't help but feel that Crazy Raider would have benefited from more. More control complexity, more levels, more variety. Maybe it's time for another reinvention.