Run Like Hell Review

Like Temple Run and countless other games, the clue is in the title. Run Like Hell is a simple game, asking the player to do very little expect, somewhat obviously, run. Escaping from cannibals you will be tasked with running across beaches, through jungles, mines and ruins. It’s both vibrant and colourful, with simplistic, eye catching cartoon design. Even if its quite minimalist, it has a very appealing manner.

Run Like Hell certainly isn’t the most imaginative game, but it is fun to play and can be quite addictive in its simplicity. Your character runs automatically, so all you have to worry about is collecting coins and power-ups while negotiating with a variety obstacles. Each obstacle is linked to the level you are in, so progressing from beach to jungle and so on will change up what you face in each level. But as you only have the ability to either jump or slide there is very little actual variety.

To help prolong the amount of time you’ll spend on Run Like Hell they’ve added in two additional modes on top of the 33 level campaign: ‘endless’ mode and multiplayer. Endless mode is the leaderboard focused mode you’d expect, trying to outdo friends on furthest distance travelled. It also gives you the option to collect coins, which can be spent buying new characters to show off in the multiplayer.

Playing online is almost identical to everything else, although you’ll have more characters jumping around on screen. Because of the simple nature of the controls no one should be worried jumping into a game as novices can compete with experts with a good chance of winning. However, matches could be as short as a few seconds as the winner is often decided by whoever catches the first power-up.

It can be quite exciting leading the pack, desperately trying to time your jumps perfectly to keep your lead, but at the back it feels tedious just hoping they’ll make a mistake with no other way of gaining the lead. Timing is the only real challenge in Run Like Hell, as your character will interact differently depending on when you make the jump, or slide. It can be the difference between parkouring on top of a large stone to clambering up its side.

Making a mistake like that will also definitely result in failure.  And during the campaign that can be annoying. With some levels taking several minutes to complete with no checkpoints, but caught out just before the end means repeating the whole level all over again. Although the endless and multiplayer modes feature randomly generated levels with a different assortment of obstacles each time. However, the single player doesn’t feature anything like that, and despite the fact it’s not interesting enough for you to memorise the each level, you’ll still get frustrated playing the same bit over and over again.

All in all, Run Like Hell is a good game, that can distract you when you need it, but it’s not much more than a bright and colourful mini-game with a few multiplayer features to keep you occupied on the next train ride.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation Vita code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.