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Genre: Sandbox game
Developer: Apex Designs
Requirements: iPhone 2.1 Software Update
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
Size: 221MB
Price: $6.99
Age Rating: 12+

Payback is a Grand Theft Auto style game for the iPhone. It’s a pretty big game, in terms of content and disk space. It’s 221MB! That’s a pretty good MB to dollar ratio, but the real question is…can I run around town with a gun, steal some cars and wreak havoc?

Yes.  You can.

The game has quite a long feature list, and rightfully so; it’s been constantly refined for the last decade. Payback has been on the Mac, the GP2X, the GBA and now the iPhone. Inside those 221MB you’ll find a full soundtrack, complete with silly voice overs. There is a plethora of weapons and vehicles for you to rampage through 11 “huge” cities. I personally don’t think they are that big, but for an iPhone game, it is impressive.

That said, the frame rate is pretty low. It didn’t bother me that much, but this is far, far away from smooth graphics. I tested it on an original iPhone, so it’s possible that the second gen iPod touch would fair better, I’ve heard it’s slightly more powerful. I still think the game can handle a better frame rate, and I’m sure the developer will improve this with updates. Honestly though, the thing that bothered me the most about the graphics wasn’t the choppy frame rate, it was the character model. Your character looks pretty much like three lines who’s lengths vary, which you’re supposed to interpret as walking. I don’t like it, not one bit.

In terms of gameplay, you’d hope that there aren’t that many controls to deal with. We’re talking about an iPhone here, and buttons are not its forte. Thankfully, there are only a few overlaid buttons. On the right, there are the forward and backward movement (or gas and brake if you’re in a car) buttons. On the left are the pause, switch weapon, action and “your car is mine” buttons.

But I actually think there are some controls missing. I’d really like to see the zooming and scrolling gestures supported. There’s no easy way of changing the camera distance or angle, and I found myself several times trying to pinch and scroll the screen in order to change this. Instead of having a setting in the menu, this would be a great place for those multitouch gestures we all love so much.

You could probably guess this, but there’s not really that much of a story to this game. Sure, you’re a gangster or something running around somewhere in Europe being naughty. The only important part of all of that is to remember which side of the street you’re supposed to be on. I mean come on, does anyone honestly buy GTA because it has a compelling story? No, you buy it so you can steal cars and kill people.

In order to progress in the game (i.e. gain access to the next level) you need to score a certain amount of points. Similar to real life, you get points for completing missions, stealing cars, and killing people. The difference being that you won’t lose your license or get executed as a result of getting these points. Now you can just go around and cause as much destruction as you like, but you have to actually stay alive too. To start a mission, just visit a ringing phone, but don’t worry, they’ll continue to ring forever, so there’s plenty of time to steal a car and wreck the town first. The score must be achieved without losing all of your lives, and you’re no cat. You get five, so use them wisely.

Overall, I like the game. It almost feels like one of those premium App Store games we’ve been hearing about, but it’s missing that polish. If it had better character models, a smoother frame rate and those multitouch gestures I mentioned, then it would be worth more.  Even still, at $6.99, it’s a good value. Its gameplay actually translates to the iPhone rather well since most of the missions are very short. You can load the game up and just play one mission at a time before you lose interest. Just get used to this one phrase, as you’ll be hearing it often.

“Can’t you bloody do anything right?”

Nope.