Jetpack Joyride Review

It only takes one highly successful game to spark a wave of imitators. Console gamers know this fact well enough with games like Call of Duty and Guitar Hero causing a breakthrough in their respective genres. That seems to be the case with mobile games as well with the mainstream success of Angry Birds resulting in hundreds upon hundreds of shameless copycats (including such blatant titles like Angry Dogs and Angry Bombs).

One of the earliest titles worthy of imitation was Canabalt, the never-ending one-button flash game that soon brought forth a whole generation of ‘runner’ games for the mobile market. Those ‘runner’ games serve as quick, yet addicting challenges to see how far you can last before the inevitable bottomless pit or spiked trap.

Jetpack Joyride is one such game but unlike other ‘runner’ games, there are no bottomless pits nor enemies to impede on your fast-paced escape. In fact, the cowardly scientists populating the screen serve more as cannon fodder as they run from their rampaging experiment run amuck (which brings to mind the XBLA hit Splosion Man).

The experiment in question is a jetpack that is suddenly commandeered by a disgruntled employee named Barry Steakfries, who is determined to make a swift exit out of the sprawling laboratory before the emergency defenses put a stop to his titular joyride. Such obstacles include electric traps, aerial lasers and heat-seeking missiles, and it only takes one hit from any of these to bring down Barry for good… or at least until you restart from the beginning.

Like all other ‘runner’ games, there’s no true end to Jetpack Joyride and instead encourages players to keep on trying to beat their high score. However, developer Half Brick has added even more incentives to keep on playing by adding a large amount of unlockable extras, much like their previous success Fruit Ninja.

In addition to surviving as long as possible, the real objective of Jetpack Joyride is collecting coins, which are scattered throughout the area. At the end of each run, the number of coins collected are added to your total, and can be used to purchase additional jetpacks, apparel, or quick-start items like a head-start boost. The majority of these items are merely aesthetic in nature, but serve as a big incentive to keep playing.

In addition to coins, there are also slot tokens, which allow you access to a slot machine at the end of a level. Each token grants you an extra chance to score either extra coins, a power-up for the next attempt (such as doubling the amount of coins), a bomb that drops on your lifeless corpse to propel you a few feet further, or if you’re particularly lucky, a second chance to resume where you last died.

If that weren’t enough, the game also adds a third incentive in the form of challenges. These random challenges encourage you to perform specific feats, such as bumping your head on the ceiling X number of times, collecting X number of tokens in one go, and so on. Successfully performing these feats will level up the challenge and award you with a big coin payout that grows larger and larger with each unlocked challenge.

Jetpack Joyride has managed to provide a great amount of content that encourages further replaying of an already-addicting game. The number of unlockable outfits and challenges successfully gel with a simple-yet-responsive one-button gameplay made even more fun with collectible power-ups scattered about (which not only control differently but also serve as an extra life).

Without a doubt, Jetpack Joyride is the Angry Birds of the Runner genre, which is just about the highest honor one can give a mobile game.