Jetpack Joyride is a fast paced, side scrolling game from developer Halfbrick Studios. If you’ve been following Halbrick Studios’ games lately, you’ll recognize the main character as none other than Barry Steakfries, a stable of the Halbrick universe. You play as the lovable hero, Gary Steakfries who after battling hordes of zombies, is now a door to door salesman. On one of his many house calls, he comes across a secret lab with a top secret jetpack. Barry, with aspirations of being a hero once more, decides to take the jetpack on a little test flight through the lab. That’s where your adventure begins. Guide Barry through an endless joyride as he avoids electrocution, missiles, and laser.

If you haven’t guessed, Jetpack Joyride is one of those endless running type games where you basically play to see how far you can get before dying. With this game, you are using a jetpack. While in other games, you mostly stay on the same plane and just jump over obstacles, Jetpack Joyride requires you to use the entire screen and Barry must maneuver past all types of obstacles from top to bottom. This includes electrocution barriers, missiles, and laser grids. Barry will get some help however from vehicles he finds that help him navigate as well as adding a layer of protection in case he does get hit.

What I particularly like about Jetpack Joyride that makes it different from other games in this genre is that it also includes a kind of secondary game within the main game. While he main goal is to see how far you can get, there is the secondary goal of collecting coins throughout each playthrough as well as collecting tokens that allow you to spin the bonus slot machine. The slot machine includes coin bonuses, power ups, extra lives, etc. Now with the extra coins that you collect in the game, you can use those to purchase upgrades for Barry like new character skins, jetpack skins, and vehicle upgrades as well as power ups.

With most Halfbrick games, the graphics are very nicely rendered and have that cartoony style to them that works for this type of game. The menus are also designed well and are easy to navigate. Controls in the game are very simple to master. This game is one hand use friendly and only requires you to tap and hold to make Barry go up or down and you can use any part of the screen to do it.

Jetpack Joyride is one of those games that really defines a genre. It is one of my favorite “endless running” games and really sets the standard for these types of games. It’s a very fun casual game that is hard to put down once you start. I especially like the added features and objectives in the game which really help push this game to a level above its peers.

Jetpack Joyride is available now in the App Store for $0.99. It is a universal app and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later.