Meet Joe Jump.  He’s a lumberjack and that’s OK.  He runs through a forest jumping over obstacles and chucks throwing axes at any logs in his way.  Joe Jump: Impossible Quest is a super-challenging continuous runner, and it’s available to download on most mobile devices, but reviewed on iPad here.

Joe constantly runs.  If you tap on the left side of the screen, he’ll jump.  But if you hit a spike or a wall or pretty much anything, you’ll have to start over at the last checkpoint.  By pressing the right side of the screen, Joe can also toss axes that can destroy certain wooden blocks.  It kind of reminds me of Master Higgins from the Adventure Island series.

The stages are pre-set, which means they’re not randomly generated, which is good because this game requires quite a bit of memorization to get past the obstacles.  My only problem is that Joe runs too fast and it’s hard to react to the upcoming jumps.  Plus this game is way too hard, even the tutorial is tough to get through.  But if you find other continuous runners too easy, then you might jump for Joe.

Kid Factor:

Nothing too violent here.  If Joe hits an obstacle or a spike, he just makes a fart noise, splat sound, or says something like “argh” before warping back to the last checkpoint.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, but not necessary just to play.  But I imagine most kids would find Joe’s escapades too hard and frustrating.

Tags: Game Reviews