You might dodge a bullet but you won’t start a riot

In an apparent homage to the 1980s arcade game Spy Hunter, Road Riot for Tango is all about shooting your way through traffic while dodging a few (figurative and literal) bullets along the way to glory.

Sneaky in-app purchases

The aim of Road Riot for Tango is to drive through a course and blow up as many cars as you can while avoiding the obstacles and collecting coins. You can then use these coins to upgrade various bits of your car. There are also some missions for you to complete.

Road Riot for Tango gets a bit monotonous after a while as you rarely move up a level, instead you merely try and score more points to upgrade your car and overtake opponents. The only changes are cars that are more difficult to make explode and the occasional booster.

If you use the Tango messenger app, you can connect with your friends and play the game with them. It seems like Tango is going down the same path as LINE, by connecting a load of other apps into its main messenger service. Next up will be the Tango camera or sticker app.

There are in-app purchases, which seems to be a given with these games, but Road Riot for Tango is even sneakier. “Oh look you’ve won a prize, choose what it is.”

“Excellent,” you think.

Unfortunately you are greeted by messages such as “Now you must buy some gems to collect this prize” or “Sorry, you have to upgrade the game to do that,” .

Perfect: a prize that I have to pay (with real money!) for.

You can also chose to watch videos to gain rewards but, annoyingly, you don’t seem to be able to close them once they’ve opened.

As easy as pie

Gameplay is really easy in Road Riot for Tango and that’s coming from someone who struggles to get that far in racing games. Hold your finger down to fire and move it from left to right to go left and right.

You can change the controls in Road Riot for Tango to adjust the sensitivity. Your car can be nice and speedy, nipping across the course, or slower and sluggish. You can change these controls if you want to make the game more difficult/easier.

More stages needed

The graphics are solid but not memorable. There are only about three or four different stages and these are rudimentary; they’re just different colors with slightly different textured terrain. Things get a bit more interesting when you get a booster, such as a force field or extra fire power, as the explosions are quite colorful if not massively spectacular.

The music is always the same in Road Riot for Tango – a sort of ominous, horror movie vibe, but it’s a lot less annoying than many games. After a while, you’ll lose track of it and it becomes ambient noise.

Great for casual gamers

Road Riot for Tango is a great game for casual users who want something that is really quick to pick up and not too complicated. For true racing game fans, it doesn’t offer enough to keep their attention for long. More and better stages, different gameplay aspects and a real variety of levels and difficulties are needed if Road Riot for Tango is to keep its place on your phone or tablet and not face the dreaded uninstall command. But, for my level of racing game skill, Road Riot for Tango was perfect!