Car Jack Streets

Gamers of a certain age get all misty-eyed  thinking back to the days when Grand Theft Auto first arrived on the scene.

Before becoming the hugely immersive 3D world you can play on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, it was a top-down 2D game that focused more on driving around in cars – and not quite as much on shooting, although still a bit.

Anyway, the reason we mention those happy days is because Car Jack Streets is heavily inspired by those original 2D Grand Theft Auto games. But that’s okay, because the co-founders of the developer behind this new mobile game were on the original team that made Grand Theft Auto.

A return to past glories, perhaps. Well, it certainly is still glorious. Car Jack Streets is a marvellous game that oozes playability from every pore. The aim is to drive around Car Jack city, pausing only to hijack new and better vehicles as you go. The game’s premise requires you to make $1m to settle a debt that you have foolishly run up with the Mafia – with the twist that you have to pay $50,000 of it back every real-world week. You are given missions by various criminal types, which can range from nicking a car through to bumping off fellow gangsters.

The various cars are a joy to drive – you can tell a lot of work has gone into that part of the game. There are neat touches throughout, such as the chalk outlines that appear when you kill someone (no blood), or the way you can drive through bushes to find spare money.

It looks good, plays better, and proves that you don’t need a cutting-edge console and 3D graphics to have a game worth

getting obsessed with.