E-Punk is a fantastic new action shooter direct from Nitako, the makers of Rasta Monkey. Based on an environmental premise, Eco Punk quickly sucks the player in with amazingly smooth visuals, throbbing soundtrack, intuitive controls, and online connectivity.
E-Punk Pros:
- Unique concept
- Vivid 3D environment
- Blaring soundtrack
- Responsive controls
- Flawless frame rate
- OpenFeint leaderboards and achievements
E-Punk Cons:
- Lacking all but one board environment
Witnessing someone carelessly drop trash as they walk down the street or throw it out their car window makes all of us mad, right? Well, take those feelings, magnify them by 1000, and you become the E-Punk bunny. The “hero” of the game has taken it upon himself to rid the world of the polluters that couldn’t care less about ruining his planet. Whether, you agree with his methods or not, this little hare gets the job done.
Gameplay takes place within an arena made up of a four-street intersection. Litter is everywhere and traffic is heavy. The goal is to help E-Punk collect all the trash quickly without getting squashed by vehicles. A skateboard is E-Punk’s sole means of transportation and he scoots around on it as quick as any rabbit should. Picking up trash successively ups your piece score exponentially. For example, a run of five pieces will score one point for the first piece and work up to five points for the fifth. This method really racks up the points fast. Scoring gets interesting when E-Punk comes across glowing matter. Picking up glowing power-ups grants bunny his weapons. Pink power-ups change bunny into an invincible kamikaze that can take out vehicles by skating into them. Red power-ups award E-Punk with a rapid-fire machine gun that shoots in the direction he faces. Each power-up only lasts a few seconds and then our “hero” returns to his trash collecting routine. Getting run over by a passing vehicle ends the game. Three gameplay modes exist. Classic mode basically lets you collect and destroy for as long as you can survive. Time Bend is the same but varies the traffic speed to mirror the speed E-Punk is skating. So, slowing down slows down the vehicles around you and vise verse. Blitz mode is Classic mode with a 60 second time limit.
Controlling E-Punk is as simple as dragging your finger around the screen. He mimics your every move. Swiping your finger in any direction shoots him off to the corresponding side of screen. Nitako has really impressed us with the level of responsiveness. We experienced no lag time, which says a lot considering the highly rendered 3D environment. Our team did wonder what tilt controls would be like on this title. This would eliminate our finger blocking the screen while playing. As it is, we didn’t have any problems with the current control mechanism. Control sensitivity can be adjusted anytime from the pause screen.
Visually, E-Punk is superb. Bright colors and details pop right off the screen. Nitako has obviously put a lot of design effort into the development. E-Punk himself has appropriately styled in punk clothing including a fashionable mohawk. Even the trash comes in forms ranging from busted up guitars to soccer balls and old bananas. The included soundtrack rocks out a heavy metal instrumental. Occasionally, E-Punk will shout out some ranting. Thankfully, these vocals can be turned off as we found them a little offensive. The music can be turned off too if you prefer your own iPod library.
Replayability, is abundant due to OpenFeint integration. High scores are automatically submitted to the online leaderboards. Nitako has designed in 15 achievements that add to your profile score.
We originally experienced E-Punk in its online form and were glad to see all the polish carry over to the iDevice perfectly. We do hope E-Punk updates with additional level designs that expand with more streets to explore. Nitako updated their previous title Rasta Monkey fairly often with new boards and characters. We look forward to E-Punk getting the same sort of attention. Priced to sell, the $0.99 E-Punk is a gnarly survival game that should be shooting up the App Store charts as fast as it takes out environmental offenders.
