MetroLand Review
“Do you guys not have phones?” Mobile gaming has grown significantly over the years since the days of Snake but I remain not the target audience. I would have been all in if we had the current technology twenty (20) years ago when I was making an hour and a half train commute into Manhattan. I bet I would have every type of mobile controller from Razer to GameSir to Backbone. I work from home now so if I am idle enough to not be working, I could just turn on my PC or a console. That said, there have been multiple mobile titles that have been successfully ported to consoles including Jetpack Joyride (My Vita says hello!) and Kingdom Rush (my favorite and the best tower defense game series ever). I was always a fan of endless runners because they were simple and the gameplay could be consumed in small bites. One such game was Subway Surfers which had you moving left and right and over and under train cars and other obstacles racking up coins and going for distance.
Developed by Kiloo, MetroLand is the spiritual successor to the aforementioned Subway Surfers. It is funny because I saw the store page and was like, “that looks familiar.” Even my 9-year-old went, “are you playing Subway Surfers?” Sure enough, the same developer behind the mobile game was the one behind MetroLand.
Endless runners are simple and basic by design. You run as far as you can and when you fail, you start over and try to go further than you did the last time. If you want to kill time with a game, this here is the way to do it. Of course, there is stuff to do in between runs but the entire gameplay loop is to get further than you previously did. What makes MetroLand any different and why should you play this over countless others? For starters, Subway Surfers was the first Google Play Store app to cross 1 billion downloads. They may know what makes a game fun.
For each run, your goal is to collect coins and get a higher score than your last run, mainly by running further without crashing and/or getting caught. Along your sprint, you can collect both power-ups to aid your current run and several different currencies that will help you in between runs which in turn helps you during the run. There are 5 different runners you have access to and depending on the runner used, a name token appears during each run. These name tokens level up the runner which increases your base score multiplier by one. Higher scores lead to additional rewards after each run. In addition to the name tokens, coins are found throughout the levels. To aid you in your run and let you go further are several power-ups including shields, coin magnets, score multipliers, speed boosts, and drone rides.
Before you jump back in for another run, you can check out your hideout and upgrade your runners. Power-ups can be improved (increased durations), vault boxes can be opened (these are found during the run), runners can be sent on missions to earn currency needed for improving, and bots can be built that provide buffs.
If endless runners are your thing and you are tired of starting down at your phone, MetroLand has your name all over it. Usually, we get to see popular games ported over to mobile but this time, it is the other way around. As far as achievements go, you can finish all 12 in a few hours but the fun lies in trying to beat your score. All unlocks will take you hours so you have plenty to run for. Be warned, this “one more run” may turn addictive dangerously quickly.
