Everything may seem alright this sunny day, the birds are beginning to chirp this early March, as you take your daily morning stroll at the park. Then “BAM“, you see a car getting smashed into the air at 60 miles per hour, flying across the street. What in the world was that? Smash Cops takes you on adventure into the world with the most brutal cops: police that kill suspects. Now, before you get offended by this gruesome tale, take a seat and enjoy the ride because this was probably one of the best top-down racers I’ve played in awhile. Unlike Death Rally, you don’t have spectacular weapons like a machine gun or rocket launchers, but with your sporty cruiser you have to beat down the suspects car with only a (rechargable) ram (a small turbo boost).

The game is set with levels that are unlockable by completing the previous unlocked missions. For those lazy bones, there’s an option for an IAP to unlock the missions, but is completely optional. There are a variety of level types, including: Pursuit, Emergency, and Challenge. Personally, Pursuit is my favorite of the three, and probably the “default” mission and the other two are variations. Pursuit is your basic chase story, crashing into the targeted suspects, flipping them into the air, then bashing them. Honestly, I simply loved spinning in circles with both the front/back of my car hitting the suspect for double the damage. Unfortunately, my unbelievably strong car isn’t invincible, making the gameplay a little more challenging. At the end of every level (including in different modes), health, time, arrested suspects, and damaged cop cars are taken into account to give a rating (out of five stars). Stars are used to unlock new cars with different stats, some favoring speed over health and damage, and vice versa.

Emergency includes some aspects in Pursuit, where you have to damage and break some cars, but this time, it’s cars chasing you. Most of the time, it’s your job to bring a prisoner or captured suspect to a maximum security prison. Cars that are chasing you may be the suspect’s friends or even a gang trying to break him/her out. Emergency is fun and exciting, and usually timed so that if you don’t make each checkpoint in time, you fail. That seemed a bit unrealistic, because when do people ever fail a mission to send a suspect to a jail due to ‘running-out-of-time’, but I do understand how the Hutch Games wanted to add more of a challenge Smash Cops. Each Challenge level is varied with different tasks such as passing a driving test, destroy illegally parked cars (don’t ask me why), collect evidence within the time limit, and reaching the end of a freeway with a badly damaged vehicle. I found some of the Challenge scenarios extremely frustrating due to the difficulty of getting a perfect score.

Some missions are difficult, so there is a ‘Super Cop’ perk which increases speed, damage, and health for a level. They can be earned by completing missions normally, but they can also be purchased via IAP as well. I found this game to be rather similar to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, but as a top-down racer than a 3rd/1st person game. I really liked the idea of NFS: Hot Pursuit so Smash Cops was a nice “add-on” to the theory. Maybe Hutch Games’ next sequel can be in the racer’s POV (point-of-view) instead.

The music and sound effects are superb, while there isn’t any background music during the actual gameplay, the menu music is pretty darned good if I say so myself. The SFX sound both realistic, but clear and sharp as well. Controls, a virtual joystick or ‘finger-behind-car’, are functional. While they aren’t optimal for precise controls, they work decently well, but gets on my nerves when on the Challenge missions. Overall, Smash Cops is a hot app, and being a “wreckless” vice isn’t too bad after all.

More information about Smash Cops is on their official website. The iOS version can be found on the App Store, universal for iPhone and iPad.