(I’m willing to bet that most of my longer blog entries get skipped over by the majority of people who subscribe to the RSS feed, which seems to be how most people read this site.)

Anyway, I’m a bit stuck when it comes to Car Jack Streets. I tried the Lite version a while back and wasn’t at all impressed, but the full version of the game was free over the weekend, so I decided to give it another chance.

First things first: I’m enjoying the full version a lot more than the Lite. Oddly, though, that’s mainly because I can drive the cars now, when I couldn’t before. The controls haven’t changed, as far as I can tell, I just seem to be fine with them now when I wasn’t last time I tried. Small adjustments and u-turns in tight spaces can still throw me, but general driving around isn’t a problem.

I can also appreciate better the things the game does well.

There are a lot of weapons around the map, meaning you’re never defenseless for long.

You never have to go hunting for missions as you get contacted all the time.

There’s a clever real time thing going on – when the game says you need to earn $50,000 in a week it means a week. There’s no game clock, the day and time are the real day and time.

And it’s got a powerful flamethrower, which is never a bad thing.

All in all it’s a more playable and interesting game than I thought it was.

It’s without annoyances, though. In the heat of the moment I keep getting lost and failing missions because I’m not sure what I’m doing. Now and again I fail a mission without any real feedback as to why, even though I think I know what’s going on. Sometimes missions come through that start in fifteen minutes, which is longer than most of my play sessions. And, most of all, having to go back to a safe house to save is deeply irritating. Fail to save at a safe house and when you next start the game you’ll have lost your car and all your weapons. Nasty.

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.