Ah, Road Riot for Tango. The driving simulation/shooter/racing game that has used up many of my hours with its strange addictiveness. The game that ranks as one of the few to garner over one million downloads each on both Google Play and iTunes. And let’s not forget the fact that it makes me wish my real-life car was this badass.
Road Riot for Tango was released last August and continues to be popular among social gaming addicts. The object of the game is to try and get the highest score possible while dodging missiles, gunfire, other cars, obstacles, and — as of the latest update — enemy bosses. Obtaining the high score will not only net you certain bragging rights with your Tango friends, but it’ll also net you some free gems.
Gems can be used to do anything from adding new weapons and functionality to your vehicle to playing a daily game where you can win in-game prizes, maybe even the grand prize of 5,000 gems. They are obtained by getting the best weekly score, playing daily and accomplishing daily tasks, and getting achievements, the latter of which were also recently added to the game. Finally, gems can also be used to customize your ride’s paint job or purchase new rides in the game’s Garage.
Coins are also used throughout the game and act as Road Riot’s main currency. Coins are mainly used to upgrade certain weapons and features of your vehicle once the weapons have been unlocked with the aforementioned gems. Weapons consist of your Main Weapon, Side Weapon, and Turrets. Each weapon and your vehicles armor can be upgraded 15 times. You can also use coins to skip Missions if they turn out to be too difficult for you to do.
Speaking of missions, there are over 100 missions in Road Riot for you to beat, and most of these will net you 10 gems each as you beat them.
There might be times where you find yourself in catch-22’s due to getting caught in a difficult spot and not being able to beat missions or obtain gems. Luckily, there’s always the option of utilizing in-app purchases to “cheat” your way to the top a little faster.
During your travels down 3 highway locations, you’ll be attempting to grab 5 different power ups consisting of nitrous boosters, double weapon mounts, repair kits, powerful loot magnets and score multipliers. You can obtain one or all of these simultaneously to really wreak havoc on the road and boost your score to new heights. It can be difficult to obtain all 5 power ups at once, so you might have to play for awhile to be able to do it.
The game really shines with its social aspect, which allows you to invite and play with your friends. Obtaining the high score is a great way to provide you with some “rub-it-in-your-face” entertainment that everyone can see. Be careful, though, as the high score is reset every week, so you might find yourself on the receiving end of the face-rubbing soon enough.
new boss battles add a whole new level of challenge to the game
After spending some time with the new version, it’s easy to say that it makes its original release seem boring by comparison. The new boss battles add a whole new level of challenge to the game, and the bosses get harder as you obtain better vehicles. While you’re fighting the bosses, you have to dodge oncoming missiles, which brought me to grief on more than one occasion while engaged in a boss battle. One thing I did note was how the score stops increasing during a boss battle despite the fact that you’re still traveling down the road. While this doesn’t really make all that much sense to me (you get more points as you travel farther), at least the points start rolling in again after the boss has been defeated.
The Achievements are arguably the best addition to the game. They fit perfectly into the game’s world and provide new challenges outside of the daily challenge and the Missions. They also provide some additional gems, which is always nice, especially considering how diabolically expensive upgrading your vehicle to a new ride can be.
There are really very few complaints I have about the game. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a few extra pieces of background music to listen to while I’m blowing everything to smithereens, even if I had to purchase them with Gems. It would also be neat to have a shield that would protect your vehicle’s armor while you’re going down the road — it would add a new upgradeable feature to the vehicle. Finally, it would be especially great if there was a Windows Phone 8 version available so that tens of millions of potential new players could join in the fun and the experience would be truly cross platform.
Road Riot for Tango is fun, addicting, and overall arguably one of the best games available for both iOS and Android, and ranks in this author’s opinion as the best game available for the Tango gaming platform. You can start your own racing journey by downloading the game for free on iOS and Android. Don’t forget to use these QR codes to make sure you have the most recent version of Tango as well. Happy racing!