Mobile Game Review of Shopping Madness

Shopping Madness, another game from Digital Chocolate, pretty much revised their "Bumper Car City" to produce this very similar game, but with a new objective: shopping! The result is nonviolent, but way too frantic.

The plot is simple: you want to be crowned "Master Shopper" by this department store by beating all reigning champions and ex-champions. In order to do that, you need to work your way up five floors each have 5 competitors who will up the stakes.

The objective is to "buy" as many items on this sales floor as possible within the time limits, by wisely using the "madness" multipliers. The madness multipliers only lasts a few seconds, but doubles any items you "shopped". If you can chain them, you can add up some truly impressive multipliers... but the most you chain, the faster you move, which makes you almost uncontrollable.

You are given two choices of control: either up/down/left/right, or left turn/right turn. Neither is really workable, as the "shopping cart" simply moves way too fast (or controls are too slow) for it to be playable, at least for me. Maybe your kids may have better luck.

As such, I can't even beat the first floor's last guy, much less the whole game. But I think I've seen enough.

The graphics are 2D sprites and rather cute in DG's art style, and the whole department store floor is represented, from counters to racks or corridors and such. I can guess that different floors would have somewhat different layout and theme, but overall idea is the same: learn where the "madness" powerups are, and try to chain them. Sound is pretty forgettable, but not annoying.

I hate to say this, but DG needs to add a speed slider or recalibrate the speed, or offer variable difficulty levels. This game is simply way too fast, and I don't claim to have poor reflexes.

Overall rating: 5.5 out of 10 (-0.5 way too fast)
Pros: easy to learn mechanics
Cons: way too fast