Jetpack Joyride iOS
User Score
8.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 56 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 52 out of 56
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 56
  3. Negative: 2 out of 56

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  1. RoosterJuice
    Sep 7, 2011
    3
    I got this game because I saw that the rating was quite astronomical on Metacritic. I also got it because I liked fruit ninja. In Jetpack Joyride you are basically going as far as you can through one extremely long level (ala Tiny Wings). Like Tiny Wings, there is not really a goal to the game beyond going as far as you can. This concept works extremely well in Tiny Wings, because Tiny Wings central mechanism is a developable skill. You can feel yourself improve over time, and therefore a "goal-less" system still feels rewarding.

    In JJ however, this is not the case. After many many plays you don't feel as though you've really gotten any better at the game. This is because your deaths are basically random, and not a true measure of your skill at the game. You will be flying along when randomly an "electro-wirery-killing-thing" (the main obstacle in the game), will appear on the side of the screen you are on. A lot of the time you are in a position where there it is not even actually POSSIBLE to get out of the way, regardless of your response time / skill level. This makes your death feel inevitable, and random.

    When you are done a level, you get to play a slot machine for various bonuses using tokens that appear randomly during the level. I find this rather ironic, as it is quite metaphorical of the actual game play itself. This whole app is just a big slot machine.

    What's worse, is that the upgrades are mostly completely USELESS, literally. Only about 5 of them actually do anything (the vehicle magnets), and they only improve your ability to score coins, and do not effect your ability to perform in any way. This is actually reminiscent of Tiny Wings' system, as TW just upgrades your points multipliers instead of upgrades. This upgrading philosophy keeps the game a "pure skill" game, meaning that the high scores are in no way effected by upgrades. The fundamental difference is that TW's skill ceiling is much much much higher than JJ's . Since the game is NOT a pure skill game, the developers should have included **** of awesome upgrades that allow you to get better and better and go farther and farther. What a wasted opportunity. To be clear, I have nothing against random games Peggle is one of my favorite casual games of all time. But Peggle doesn't pretend to be a skill based game. JJ does.

    There are also consumables, that are astronomically expensive... one of which could be initially conceived as useful, which is the "second chance" consumable which allows you to . However going as far as you can in the game doesn't actually feel like the goal of the game. The goal of the game feels like scoring as many coins as possible. So, if the goal is scoring as many coins as possible, why would I spend 5000 coins on something that will allow me to continue through one of my random deaths? It's completely, and utterly stupid. One of the other upgrades is a "750m head start", but again this goes under the assumption that I feel like the goal of the game is to go as far as I can, which isn't the case.

    The only place this game hits, and hits hard, is the aesthetics. It's Metal Slug-esc veneer is gorgeous, the coins and sounds are so cute you just wanna eat them. The skin of this game masks an other wise completely pointless, goalless, random, skill-less system, pretending to be the opposite.

    I'm actually dumbfounded by the positive reviews this game has received. It's clear that the critics of the game app market don't have much gaming experience. For a skill based "go as far as you can" game, play Tiny Wings. For a random "go as far as you can" game, play Flight by Armor games. This game fails on all fronts, but sure does look pretty.    … Collapse

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
90 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 27 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 27
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 27
  3. Negative: 0 out of 27
  1. SpazioGames
    May 1, 2012
    90
    Simple and fun, Jetpack Joyride is a must have in every iOS Device.
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  2. Eurogamer Italy
    Jan 19, 2012
    90
    Another masterpiece from the makers of Fruit Ninja. It's free, it's funny, it's hypnotic... it's a must have!
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  3. Gameblog.fr
    Jan 12, 2012
    90
    With the hugely popular Angry Birds, and the unique Sword and Sworcery, Jetpack Joyride forms up the tryptic of the smartphone/tablet typical must-have games. It's pure action, through a single move : touching the screen to control the Jetpack, and survive the randomly generated traps as long as possible. It's highly addictive, filled with nice bonuses to unlock and blessed with a very nice artistic touch, typically referencing the video game world... just grab it!
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