Raging Thunder Demo Released; Video Preview

Posted by Eric March on May 8, 2008 at 12:37 am

Well here’s an unexpected treat. Mobile game developer Polarbit have apparently released (or have had leaked) a demo of an upcoming port of their 3D racing game entitled Raging Thunder.

Peviously released in 2006/2007 for a variety of mobile devices, Raging Thunder is three parts circuit racing and one part Wipeout. In general it’s your typical circuit race with high performance cars, but adds powerups to the track such as speed boost (lightning bolt), slow (skull) and cash (dollar sign, only in championship mode).

The game is played in portrait mode exclusively — one of the telltale signs of its roots on less powerful candybar and flip devices. Control is entirely through the accelerometer. This makes it pretty tricky; I’ve never been a fan of accelerometer control except where it truly fits (Labyrinth, iPhysics, and other such games that employ significant use of gravity) and this is no exception. While using your device as a steering wheel does make a certain amount of sense, it loses quite a bit of its novelty when you realize that A) your view tilts with it, B) it’s really touchy, and C) there’s no positive or immediate feedback to let you know if you’re turning, or by how much, and by the time you see yourself turning, you’ve probably already oversteered, which you’ll end up overcorrecting for after you slam into the wall. I could probably get used to it in time and learn a little more finesse with the controls, but I also think the controls need some tweaking as well.

Visually, the game is pretty decent, though the low resolution menu screens, fonts and textures, low poly count, and lack of shadows, transparency, specular highlights, and reflections betray its scaled-down roots. Performance is excellent though, with it appearing to run at a full frame rate — which is unsurprising given that in its present incarnation, it probably isn’t pushing the PowerVR very hard.

This iPhone release appears to be a work-in-progress demonstration of what will undoubtedly become a commercial App Store release once it has been completed. There are several bugs and glitches in the game, and the settings menu makes mention of joystick control, which appears to be a remnant of functionality present on its predecessor. It also tends to drop back to springboard if you pause the game (by tapping the screen) and attempt to return by tapping on “resume.”

Overall though, even in its limited demo form and with its dodgy control mechanism, this is still the best racing game we’ve seen on the iPhone thus far, and if Polarbit enhance the game and allow it to take advantage of all the PowerVR has to offer, we should see an excellent and polished racing game by the time it hits the App Store.

You can grab it from the ModMyiFone repo (http://modmyifone.com/installer.xml). Check out the video below.

(Source: Installer)

One Response to “Raging Thunder Demo Released; Video Preview”

Playing Raging Thunder iPhone/iPod Touch Game with a Stearing Wheel (Video) | Touch Podium said:

May 9th, 2008 at 1:09 am

[...] bright idea to slap his iPod Touch on a gaming steering wheel, giving better grip and feel to the just recently released Raging Thunder iPhone/iPod Touch [...]