AutoMangle Lite

by Eric March on November 5, 2008 at 11:14 am

(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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App Name: AutoMangle Lite
Developer: Phart Games
Category: Action Games

Aw, yeah, who’s ready for a beautiful ballet of twisted metal, smoking tires and heavy ordnance?  Of course I’m talking about a smash up derby — quite possibly the first of its kind on the App Store.  For those of you who are looking to take your frustrations out in an apocalyptic arena of four-wheeled death but aren’t willing to risk damage to your Prius, I’m here to give you the low-down on AutoMangle.

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the concept of a destruction derby, so I’m just going to focus here on everything else.  Upon starting the game you have your choice of cars, base colour, and arcade or simulation handling.  There are also numerous game modes to choose from — a free-for-all vehicular melee, team deathmatch, or circuit race.  Each mode can be further customized by whether or not you want vehicles to respawn after they are destroyed, the max health of all vehicles, how many AI opponents you will face, whether there is a time limit (and what that time limit is) and what sort of weapons to allow in the game.

The gameplay here is pretty good.  Tilt to steer, use the arrows on the left side of the screen for acceleration/braking, and the buttons on the right to fire primary and secondary weapons.  Steering is pretty responsive though a bit mushy, and your vehicle has perhaps a bit too much inertia — but evidently there is an update forthcoming that will improve vehicle dynamics and control.

The arena generally consists of you, several other cars, and ramps scattered around for you to Dukes of Hazard your way over enemies — or evade their pursuit, and you’ll find various weapon powerups floating around that you can use to assist you in your quest for total destruction — lasers, missiles and more are yours, at least until their ammo runs out, then you revert back to your trusty machine guns.

Graphically AutoMangle is pretty good.  The vehicle models have very low poly counts to keep the frame rate high — though I’m willing to bet that the 3D engine could be optimized to make for higher fidelity models.  As a result of that, the vehicles all look like tricked Matchbox cars with pimped out paint jobs. Also, don’t expect to see physical damage on any of the vehicles; low poly counts mean no dynamic deformations, no destructable objects like doors, hood, trunk, and so on.  The only visible indication of how much damage you’ve done is smoke coming from the engine.  There is a HUD in the top right that does tell you how much damage you’ve taken to each of 6 points on your vehicle though.  There’s also a radar display on the top right to tell you where your opponents are.

The effects are quite nice; the missile shoots of with a flare of its booster, leaving a trail of smoke, and impacts with a brief flash and explosion, which is very nicely done. Sound here is decent and plentiful, so I have few complaints on that end either.  Overall I’m pretty impressed with AutoMangle — this is one I actually bought prior to the demo being available (because I do likes me some destruction derby) and the sales pitch was convincing.

This lite version features only 1 of the 4 arenas that will be available in the full 1.0.3 upgrade version, 2 of the 6 weapons, and a one minute time limit.  (The upgraded lite version that’s forthcoming wil bump that to 2 miuntes)  The full version also features a better frame rate and better handling (as mentioned earlier).  A further future upgrade will also feature an arena editor.  Best of all, the full version is only a buck right now — well worth snapping up before the price gets a hike.

But in case you feel like neither buying the full version nor installing the demo, check out the gameplay video below.

P.S. I’ll bet the stodgy reviewers at Apple got a little twist in their knickers when they saw Phart Games’ name, given their dislike of things scatological.  I find that perversely amusing — but then I would, wouldn’t I?

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Posted in Games: Action