Evasion Pong is a game about evading obstacles by decelerating a ball between two goals. Every time the ball hits a goal you get a point. It´s a very basic premise not so greatly executed, and we all know most good iPhone games are a basic premise executed brilliantly. The design is rather direct and simple, no neat geometrical figures or attractive palette of colors to catch the player’s eye, just what is needed to run the game, nothing beyond what is needed.
The soundtrack (or rather the two tracks that are looped over and over) is good at first but after three to four minutes it gets unbearable. Don´t get me wrong, I like electronic music, but the problem is the sample is too short and monotonous. Up until this point the experience the game offers is basically, meh! It can entertain for a few minutes, quick short burst while you wait in a line or something like that.
The problem comes with the ads, the game is riddled with them. Even the start screen has a banner right in the bottom, it creates a dissonance between the design of the main screen and the randomness of color of the ad. When you lose, a full screen ad is immediately shoved in your face, and after a while you are prompted to watch a video or download another app just to get a continue. The situation gets so out of hand that eventually, and this doesn’t take long, a video will be played, full-screen, right in the middle of your play-through. It happened to me around five times, I could hear the game continuing on the background as I was forced to watch the ad, which, of course, you can’t skip. The adds can be turned of by putting your cellphone in airplane mode, but, frankly, that’s just a pain in the ass.
I know it´s supposed to be arcade, I know a game creator has to make a profit off of his creation and I know one could make the case for a meta narrative embedded in the game to make the criticism of how old arcades played on the user´s need to play by milking his money, but I don´t think this is the case.
In conclusion: Evasion Pong is awful, just awful.
