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Category: Arcade game
Developer: xCube Labs
Minimum System Requirements: iPhone 2.0 software udpate
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
File Size: 5.0MB
Version Reviewed: 1.2
Price: $0.99
Age Rating: 4+

iChase is Pac Man. The developers are doing nothing to hide that, even mentioning Pac Man on the program’s iTunes App Store page. Of course, you kind of have to, really, when the games are this close. The boards are different, the characters are different, but the gameplay is essentially the same, with one major (and ultimately critical) difference:

Pac Man had a joystick.

In iChase, you control a little fish who has to swim around a maze eating bubbles. Trying to catch and kill you are a bunch of colorful octopuses who actually look more like those bubbles from the bathroom tile cleaner commercials. You have to clear each maze of all bubbles to proceed to the bonus round, and each level contains power-ups that allow you to kill the octopuses for a brief time. In the bonus rounds, you have to catch octopuses in a certain amount of time. Complete the maze and the bonus round, and you advance to the next level.

The graphics are nice, as is the sound, although the developers made the odd decision to utilize the SMS received alert, which confused me at first. The whole package is put together well, although I’ll confess that I prefer controlling some kind of weird circle with a mouth over something I can accurately recognize as a fish. iChase maybe tries a bit too hard to be cute, and I just don’t think fish are cute. And yes, that includes Nemo. Get off my back; I’m an adult man with a mortgage and a graying beard. If I start finding cartoon fish cute, next up will be Michael Buble albums, and we just can’t be having that, now, can we?

iChase offers 42 levels of bubble eating, octopus avoiding fun. That would certainly be enough to keep arcade gamers entertained for quite some time, if any would bother to play it for quite some time. But you likely won’t, because the controls in iChase are sketchy. That’s not entirely the fault of xCube Labs. They tried to fix them, and the difference in playability between version 1.0 and 1.2 is astonishing, but the accelerometer is the accelerometer, after all. The iPhone has no joystick, so what else are you going to use? Adding touch controls wouldn’t work, as sliding your thumb from virtual button to virtual button still wouldn’t offer the precision to quickly cut corner and make turns. Bomberman Touch style controls wouldn’t work, either, as you’d just be getting your fingers and thumbs in the way of the action.

So, we’re stuck with the accelerometer, which isn’t conducive to this type of game. To make matters worse, iChase doesn’t allow you to adjust the tilt sensitivity, so you’re stuck with what you’ve got. Tilting the phone to turn is snappier in v1.2, but still not very precise. As a result, the game becomes needlessly frustrating when you hit the faster, harder levels, and that’s exactly what you don’t want in an arcade game. Even if you do grow accustomed to the controls, there will inevitably be times where you miss a turn because you didn’t tilt fast enough, and will swim directly into the tentacles of a pursuing octopus.

xCube Labs has done has well as they could with a game of this sort. The graphics are sharp and the sound effects are excellent. But games that require quick decisions and sharp reflexes simply shouldn’t be built over an accelerometer-based control scheme. At 99 cents (the current holiday special price), it may be worth it just so you learn to not try any other Pac Mac style games. But if you’re looking for decent arcade action, look elsewhere. Here, it just ends in frustration.