Reckless Getaway

The protagonist in Reckless Getaway is unhinged. He may well have tattooed “you’ll never take me alive, copper!” across his face, because his antics aren’t so much reckless as certifiable. Having robbed a bank, he speeds away, to cause destruction, jump off of very high things indeed and pick up giant coins that suspiciously litter the local area.

Annoyingly, Reckless Getaway feels like two games with a disconnect between them. Importantly, only one of them is fun. To unlock tracks, the game demands you learn them intimately, collect most of the coins and make it to the end without wrecking your car—each wreck costs you one of four stars.

Consequently, you end up snaking all over the road like an idiot, to grab all the coins, gingerly avoiding the cops. That’s far less fun than driving like a loon, at high-speed, smashing cars out of the way and leaping off of cliffs and half-finished bridges like a maniac.

At its best, then, this is Spy Hunter and Burnout’s highlights combined; at its worst, it’s frustrating drudge-work. A pity.