Super Crate Box

CNET Editors' review

by: Jason Parker on January 18, 2012

Super Crate Box is a maddeningly addictive arcade platformer with a very simple concept, but manages to keep you coming back for more. Using left and right directional buttons on the left and buttons for jumping and firing on the right, your only mission is to stay alive and collect weapon crates. When you collect one, another appears randomly on the map and you receive a random weapon for fighting off the endless rampage of deadly monsters.

Super Crate Box is one of those games that is highly rage-inducing. Even the slightest touch by one of the enemies ends your game and often the weapons can hurt you as much as they help you. For example, a grenade launcher has an excellent blast radius, but you have to account for the amount of time it takes for a grenade to explode once it leaves the gun (giving enemies time to get you). The disc gun is deadly against your foes, but once shot, the disc bounces off the wall and returns to where you're standing (we're certain you will come to hate the disc gun). If you can manage to stay alive long enough to grab just 10 cases in one game (no easy task), you'll unlock a new map forcing you to rethink your entire strategy.

The game starts you out on Normal mode, and if you can grab 40 crates before dying (almost impossible!) you'll unlock the official SFMT mode. At the time of this writing, I can't find out what SFMT stands for, but I do know you'll need to grab 20 crates in this faster mode in order to open Ambush mode. Suffice it to say, the game is already hard and just gets harder with each mode.

Somehow, even when I died countless times in Super Crate Box, something kept me trying just "one more time" to beat my record. If you don't throw your iPhone across the room first in frustration, we think this will be your experience with this fun time-waster as well.