Car Jack Streets Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

It's not GTA but pretty close

It seems that the holy grail of mobile gaming is the ultimate GTA game. If the developers could capture all that is great about GTA and miniturise it for the mobile screen, they could retire in a matter of weeks. Saints Row on the console did make it to mobile and received a solid 76% in our review. The kings of the clones, Gameloft, gave it a bash with life in Crime City and their effort managed to receive one of our gold award. Now we have Car Jack Streets from Tag Games.

For the last 12 months, Car Jack Streets has been simmering waiting to explode as GTA on the mobile (it's even got some of the original guys working on it). All the hype is finally over and the game is now out (or very soon). After 5 days of hard playing, we're still waiting for the helicopter mission.

In truth, creating anything resembling the more recent GTA games was always going to be tricky on the mobile. Car Jack Streets is not GTA but it does capture some its aspects rather well. The graphics are basic albeit retro, which is a throwback to the old GTA games. The controls are incredibly simple and much more suited to a keypad than Saints Row Mobile.

It is the freedom in the gameplay that makes Car Jack Streets a good title. First, a little backstory. You are a hoodlum that owes the mob $1 million dollars. The mob isn't unreasonable and is happy to accept $50,000 every week until the debt is paid off. To repay the debt, you have to take on a few shady jobs for the underworld.

The game patches into your mobile clock and many aspects of the game are related to you in real time. If you start the game of October 1st, your first payment will be due on October 8th. If you are playing at 8pm, some of the missions will 'open' at 9pm. Unbelievably, not many developers have created games that tap into the one application that all mobiles need. Tag have taken the initiative and this addition helps to conceive the fantasy world of Car Jack Streets and keeps it real. No doubt future games will tap into the time and location of the gamer but that’s for another conference.

The missions themselves are mostly concerned with driving around town from one place to another; either to deliver packages, people or bullets. There is an awful lot of driving in this game. The clue is in the title so don’t be expecting any missions involving your two feet or a random bicycle/helicopter. Thankfully, the driving is pretty impressive. The town is pretty large and has all manner of highways, byways and cheeky shortcuts to find. There is no map but there is a GPS arrow to point you towards your destination. After a lot of driving, you will slowly find your bearings. After a lot of driving you might even get used to the driving. There are 14 different cars and trucks to drive and they all have their own characteristics. Some have really poor handling, skid like mad and explode after only a few touches. It is good fun driving the different types around and they each have their own uses when it comes to the missions.

The game is filled with standard missions such as stealing cars to take to the auto shop or being a cabbie for the day. The standard missions can be quite easy and fairly low paid but each day you will also get 4 or 5 special missions; these are a lot trickier but the rewards are higher. You are free to partake in any mission at pretty much any time and the game generally works around you.

This is the first Tag Core title from Tag Games, but it’s not aimed just at the hard core gamers. The game has been subtly designed to allow you to get the most out of the game within 20 minutes of daily play. That should be enough time to mindlessly drive around and participate in some of the special missions. For all the hard core gamers, there are plenty of side missions that can be played for hours.

While it may not look as good as some of the competition and may appear a little simplistic, Car Jack Streets gives you the freedom to play the game however you want and for that alone it should be applauded.