Jetpack Joyride

There was a bit of a disaster earlier when Jetpack Joyride on my iPhone crashed. This happens from time to time, and usually I just relaunch the title. This time, when I did that, I noticed some weird things: I received a few achievements (from Game Center) and my level was reset to zero. My missions had changed, so I jumped into the game and played as normal. When I perished at around 1,800m the game was excited to tell me that was my personal best. In fact, my personal best is around 4,800m, but the game seems to have forgotten this. All my achievements and level progress was lost, but none of my purchased items were.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the game. It's an "infinite runner" style of game where the world is being automatically created as you go, and could theoretically last forever. The farther along you go, the harder it becomes, and death is inevitable. You play the character of Barry, who steals a jetpack from a lab and proceeds to make his escape - the actual joyride itself. But escape is impossible in this infinite world, as you bob up and down avoiding missiles, lasers and 'zappers' all the while scaring scientists and taking control of various vehicles. Tilt your iPhone into landscape, and the world zooms by horizontally: there is only one "button" which activates your jetpack. Let go of the screen and you begin descending, tap or hold the screen anywhere and you go back up. Perhaps a video will give you a better idea of the gameplay (not my video).

In your joyride, you collect coins, and use these coins to buy various items. You can get different types of jetpacks (they all handle the same though) and upgrade the different vehicles. You can buy costume changes, and different utilities to help you in your journey and to add to your final distance. All in all it's incredibly addictive. You're given three missions at a time to accomplish, which could include things such as flying past so many blinking lights in one go, collecting a number of coins, high-fiving scientists or more cumulative things, like getting so much distance in a vehicle, or even dying within a certain distance. Games are quick, and when you die, you can throw yourself right back into the mix. It's a time waster, for sure, a distraction from whatever is going on.

Initially, I played the game all the way through twice. That is to say, I hit the maximum level and ran out of missions, so the game lets you start over while giving you a badge whenever you do so. I lost all my badges. I put the game away for a while, but in the past few weeks I got into it again and must have double my hours, at the very least. The terrifying thing is that I put in ten hours of gameplay before my "second run" with the title. I figure at the time of the crash, I invested twenty hours easily, which again, is absolutely terrifying. This is all done in four or five minute chunks of time over the course of a few months. This is indeed a form of gaming that is taking over people's lives without them even knowing, and in some cases can be quite a financial burden. There are not many opportunities to spend real money in this game: I bought the utility that doubles my coins collected every run for 99 cents. The game itself was 99 cents and for a combined investment of less than two dollars, I would say 20 hours of gameplay makes this quite the bargain. A scary, addictive bargain.