Take a look.


Yes, it’s a top-down GTA clone. I’ve just spent half an hour so trying out the Lite version. It’s been quite well-received and I can see why. It’s not as good as GTA, but it’s a thoroughly decent stab at making a basic GTA game on an iPhone. It’s just not got any sort of magic, judging from my time with it. Nothing’s wrong – except the horrific default steering controls, which you can thankfully change – but guns don’t really kick, collisions are just vaguely bouncy things that happen, jumping over a river feels like stepping over a puddle…

The current price of £1.19 feels about right to me. I don’t think I’ll be buying. I recently gorged myself on the feast that was Chinatown Wars, this feels more like a packet of ready salted crisps next to that game’s fully loaded baked potato. Or to make another tortuous analogy, if GTA is a beautiful woman, Car Jack Streets is the same woman, just without her skin. It’s basically almost exactly the same, but you wouldn’t want to, you know…

It’s a good effort, I think, and all props to the developers for making a playable GTA clone on the iPhone, but it’s not really enough for me. It’s more interesting because of where it is rather what it is, I reckon.

Also, from what I’ve read, your game ends if you don’t make payments to your loan shark on time, very much limiting how much you can actually bugger about. I don’t like the sound of that – and it’s something the developers have said will be changed for the upcoming DSi release.

Anyway, all this is just based on the Lite version of the game, so you might as well try it for yourself for nowt and see if I’m talking crap or not.