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It’s time for another installment of Palm Discovery’s wReview Wednesday!

Parking Mania for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

How good are you at parking? I must admit that I hardly parallel park anymore and probably am not nearly as good at it as I was when I first learned to drive my car. But I’m actually asking about how good are you at parking when playing Parking Mania, a very interesting and addictive game that involves, yes, you guessed it, parking.

Parking mania involves the task of navigating your car around curves, traffic and others and park it at a designated parking spot. Of course, the objective is to park the car in as little time as possible and avoid getting into crashes or bumping into things. The whole process gets even more challenging with the option of using the iPhone’s accelerometer to control the steering wheel. Tilt to the left to turn the wheel to the left and right to turn to the right. What makes it challenging is that you’re viewing the car from above and will need to be able to determine how to tilt it to navigate it around the screen. Believe me, it’s a lot harder than it sounds. There are options of controlling the steering wheel in other ways. You can opt to have a virtual steering wheel displayed and be able to move your finger in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction around to control it or choose to control it with a dragging wheel where you can drag the wheel to the left or right to direct it in such direction. Regardless of which option you select to control the wheel, it will be quite a challenge but a very fun and addictive challenge.

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Parking Mania is quite an accurate name for the game. Your objective of the game is to navigate your selected car through a designated route of arrows around curves, traffic and others to park at a designated parking spot. Part of the challenge is controlling the wheel and gas pedal to navigate around the obstacles and cars and avoid crashing into cars, trucks or walls. The other challenge is to navigate the car and park the car in as fast a time as you can.

What I find most fun and I enjoyed is the various options available to control the steering wheel and drive the car. You can choose from three different ways. First, you can use the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer to control the steering. That is the most fun and the most challenging in my view. Especially since you’re viewing the car from up top, being able to stay focused on the car and be able to correctly tilt the iPhone in the direction you wish it to go isn’t as easy as it sounds. However, it makes for a very fun and challenging game play. There is a vertical bar designated as the gas pedal on the right side with “D” (forward) and “R” (reverse). Drag your finger either upwards toward the “D” to move the car forward or drag it downwards towards the “R” to move the car in the reverse direction. Aside from controlling via the accelerometer, there is an option to steer the wheel via a virtual steering wheel. Drag your finger either in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction over the wheel to make the steering wheel turn in your desired direction. Again, this isn’t as easy as it sounds either. Finally, there is an option to control the wheel via the wheel drag. The control consists of a horizontal line with L (left) and R (right) on both ends and a steering wheel in the middle. Drag your finger to pull the wheel to the left to make the steering wheel turn the car left and right to make it turn right. This is probably the easiest option to control the car in my view. For those who are left-handed, you can also choose to “flip” the controls around so that the gas pedal is on the left side and the wheel controls on the right. Regardless of which option you choose to control the wheel, you will find it a very challenging, fun and addictive game.

More details of Parking Mania for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (taken from Apple iTunes store)

Do you have the spatial awareness and dexterity of a lump of cheese? Or are you the hottest driver since the invention of the wheel? – Now’s your chance to prove it, in the most skilful and addictive driving and parking game in the App Store.

With Parking Mania’s new release on the iPad, this iPhone version of the game has also been upgraded from 40 to 80 levels, and from 20 to over 30 vehicles!

ENGROSSING AND ADDICTIVE

Parking Mania captures that great, ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ style of gameplay that will keep you coming back for more. With hidden areas and pick-ups, time-based bonuses and a driving experience that ranges from exhilaratingly smooth to devilishly tricky, there’s always more to explore, and higher speeds to hit!

PERFECT CONTROL

Parking Mania is a game about precision, style and skill, so it makes sense that Parking Mania offers three different, beautifully balanced control schemes to fit every player: you can steer by tilting the iPhone, or with an on-screen steering wheel, or using a smooth slider bar. Experiment, find your comfort zone, and choose the control scheme you prefer!

ENDLESS VARIETY

With over 30 vehicles ranging from sports cars to big-rigs, playable in 80 varied, multi-objective levels, across night and day, and travelling from parking lots through city streets and highways – all with random AI-controlled traffic – Parking Mania’s huge variety of gameplay will give you hours upon hours of entertainment.

FEEL THE FUN

Parking Mania’s chock-full of fun extras, from vibrations when you collide, to being able to play your own music tracks as well as the Parking Mania tunes, to earning star-ratings of levels you’ve completed based on your speed and accuracy. Show off your skills by competing on the integrated Crystal leaderboards, and win Achievements as you raise your game!

So hold onto your real-life No-Claims Bonus, and channel those insane driving skills into Parking Mania today!

What’s New in Version 1.6

- 10 new levels
- 10 new cars
- Major optimisations and bug fixes

Slideshow of Parking Mania for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Video of Parking Mania for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Video review of Parking Mania for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Here are my observations:

I Liked:

Easy to understand to play

The game is fairly easy to figure out how to play. The game offers a few introductory screens explaining how to control the car for the several controlling options. The hard part is coordinating your fingers and hands to make the car go the direction you want it to.

Fun, challenging and addictive

I found the game to be extremely fun yet challenging and highly addictive. This is one of the few games where I am laughing out loud while I’m trying to steer the car in the direction I want it to go. The funniest is when I know I’m trying hard to tilt the screen into one direction and I find myself tilting in that same direction, as if that was going to help. This is a fun game and one of the few that I find myself laughing as I play along.

Support background music playback

The game offers background music playback support. This allows those of us who wish to listen to our favorite music on our iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad to be able to listen to music while playing the game.

Crystal game network supported

For those who like to connect with others via the Crystal network, which is similar to Open Feint and Game Center, you’ll be able to connect to Crystal.

100 levels

How many games do you know that offer 100 levels? Well, this one does. Get playing because you’ll be playing for a while. I’m certainly not complaining.

FREE Lite version available

Although many developers offer a lite or free version to allow potential players and customers to try it out before they buy it (like myself), I am very happy that there is a free lite version available for me to try out. Had there not been a free Lite version, I may not necessarily have bought it without trying it out first. So, if you’re curious about it, give Parking Mania Lite a try yourself. Once you try and like it, you can buy Parking Mania for 99 cents.

I Didn’t Like:

Control pop up screen shows up at every game launch

Yes, it is very helpful for the game to offer the pop up screens showing and explaining how to control the car. However, when the same pop up shows up every single time I play the game, it gets very annoying. I would have expected there be an option on the pop up screen to allow me to dismiss it after I’ve viewed it the first time. Instead, I get those pop ups every time and they are annoying since I don’t need to view them again since I know how to play the game. Obviously, I would like to request that the developers add in a fix to this so that it doesn’t keep popping up.

No side stages or objectives available

As much as the game is fun to play, I think that any game will start to become boring after a while. I was hoping that the game offered other side stages or objectives such as a bonus round or stage or being able to collect money to buy and customize the cars I drive. This could make the game a bit more fun as it won’t be the same task of parking the car every stage or level.

No Game Center support

Although the game supports a similar connection to Crystal, I would have preferred if the game also supported other similar connections like Game Center and Open Feint. However, currently these services are not supported on this game.

No volume slider

The sound and music are toggled either ON or OFF. There is no volume slider to select the volume of the sound and/or music.

Review Summary

If you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, Parking Mania will certainly help you waste away some of that time, offering 100 levels of parking madness. The game is fun, challenging and addictive, especially if you opt to control the car via the accelerometer. Just make sure you don’t fall off balance as you tilt the iPhone over to one side. With 100 levels to play, you’re destined to be a parking master by the time you’re finished playing, well at least in the virtual world.

Try the free Parking Mania Lite for yourself.

Enjoyed this review? Check out the many other Palm Discovery software reviews here such as palm os software review, windows-mobile software review, symbian os software review, iPhone and ipod touch software review, android software review.

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