Parking Mania Review

By , on September 18, 2009


Parking Mania
Download on the AppStore
3 out of 5

PROS

  • Good looking cartoony visuals.
  • The variation in the vehicles you park is a lot of fun; parking semi-trucks, police cars and minis, not just normal cars.

CONS

  • Fixed camera angle makes gameplay annoying.
  • The steering controls don’t work as well as they should.
  • The game length is very short; 40 levels all of which can be finished in under two minutes.

VERDICT

If the appeal of parking cars is far too alluring to pass up, then you might want to try iPark It! instead of Parking Mania.


  • Full Review
  • App Store Info

Parking Mania is a parking simulator game for the iPhone. Players must take control of a number of different vehicles and navigate a parking lot or road side gap in order to park it as fast and neatly as possible. The faster and straighter the park, the more money you will earn.

Players move their vehicles by using the iPhone tilt function to steer and a small throttle lever to control speed. The only problem players might have concerns the steering. The tilt controls are a good idea but it’s often unclear which way to tilt to turn, and no, it isn’t as simple as tilt left to turn left; as the levels change and so does the steering.

The cartoony visuals are well done but the camera remains the same and will get confusing when coupled with the awkward steering controls when trying to navigate a series of sharp turns. The game sound is decent but players may want to use their iPod instead of the odd xylophone filled jazz music. The game features one main mode, and after finishing the 40 levels, players must try to beat their old scores to get a leaderboard ranking.

Parking Mania is a solid attempt at a relatively new genre of games. The only problem here is that the steering and fixed camera angles make gameplay an infuriating experience. This is a problem that another parking game, iPark It!, had but was fixed shortly after its release, something that needs to happen here. So if you want to try your hand at a car parking game, you might want to try a different title.

Screenshots

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