Subway Surfers Review (Android & iOS)

Subway Surfers’ take on the endless runner blueprint is one for the books. Aside from it being annoyingly easy to drop into and skirt around like a freight train barreling through a tunnel on a last-minute trip, it feels like the perfect compliment to any lazy afternoon on the couch. It doesn’t ask much of you. Instead, it offers out its hand and invites you to trolley through the motions when you feel so inclined to abandon all other avenues of life and opt for the locomotive, where voyages are always enthralling, and the destinations are anywhere but the checkered flag. It might not offer the ever-alluring light at the end of the tunnel, but it sure as heck makes the journey reflect the price of the boarding pass.

Of course, Subway Surfers doesn’t do the whole VIP treatment, and it definitely doesn’t abide by the idea that, if you build a perfect game, then the rewards will fall into your lap like hail in the aftermath of a perfect storm. Frankly, it doesn’t go much further than the average endless runner experience, which of course begs the question: How on earth does a game that has all of the familiar trappings of a common IP amount to such high praise? What makes Subway Surfers the be all, end all of endless runners? Let’s talk about it.

Subway Surfers is a bit like Candy Crush, in that, once you start to quell your appetite, you soon realize that it’s almost impossible to put a lid on that craving. You commence a long journey, but quickly come to the conclusion that there are no final platforms to hit — only a seemingly endless stream of stops with a vast litter of random perks and passengers, obstacles and reasons to climb aboard for the fifth, sixth, or perhaps even eightieth time. And, just to echo, Subway Surfers doesn’t exactly have that wow factor, either. It isn’t a pretty game, and it doesn’t exactly hold a candle against most other top-heavy mobile games on the market, for that matter. So tell me — why is so darn more-ish? Why on earth do I continue to employ it as a go-to tool for curbing boredom? The jury’s out on that one.

Perhaps it’s the simplification of its mechanics, or the fact that, win or lose, there are always rails to traverse when it comes to rifling through the dimly lit tunnels of Subway Surfers’ underground vortex. Given that it is such an easy game to roll into and play off the bat, it almost seems, I don’t know, obvious. Suffice it to say, there’s an alluring quality that makes such a basic concept feel tremendously appealing. It might not flaunt the near-perfect controls or the glorious visual effects, much less the flawless soundboard or the apt themes. Yet, there’s something here that draws us in. Another character with distinctive personality traits; a new network rail to glide; a second helping of coins to help fund that ever-elusive pick-me-up.

Honestly, it doesn’t take much to fall into a perpetual cycle of grinding endless rails and collecting spoils and freight. Given that Subway Surfers is built with the intent to appeal to almost anyone who can fumble two thumbs and operate a smartphone, you can more or less take one journey and quickly find yourself on a globe-trotting trip around the sun with the hopes of sticking around for the long haul or, at the very least, until the union decide that enough is enough and a rail strike is well overdue. The thing is, Subway Surfers doesn’t really end, and it’s thanks to the vast updates and content drops that keep it in circulation that make any possible union strike unfathomably difficult to incubate. But that isn’t a bad thing; it’s merely an endless runner game doing what it does best, nothing more, nothing less.

While on the subject of rolling updates and freshly minted content, Subway Surfers continues to boast a quality selection of regular events thanks to its World Tour roadmap—a schedule that allows for players to explore various cities and cultural landmarks around the globe, as well as unlock new characters, boards, and seasonal items. Of course, the primary gameplay features remain the same, with the common objective being to bolt through various corridors and tracks by either swiping up, left, down, or right to move and evade oncoming locomotives and obstacles. Moreover, it keeps ahold of all of the same basic items, including coins, multipliers, jetpacks, mystery boxes and super sneakers, among other useful items that can allow you to push just a little further along the tracks and earn additional perks. All of that is the same. But then, as the saying goes — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I won’t pretend that Subway Surfers is the greatest mobile game of all time, because it just wouldn’t be true. Visually, it’s lacking in all basic commodities, as is it in its mechanics and interface. But that isn’t what you tend to look for in a game like Subway Surfers, nor is it something that you complain about when it doesn’t quite meet the same standards as most top-heavy mobile games. If Subway Surfers is anything at all, it’s a guilty pleasure that you can’t help but veer toward to help cure your boredom. It might not boast the best facets in the world, but if there’s one thing that it can do, it’s remediate your mind whilst you look for alternate tracks to cross.

Verdict

Subway Surfers continues to hold its position as a fantastic addition to any pocket-sized library in the Android and iOS space. With a frequently updated roadmap of World Tour chapters, characters, and hoverboards to keep you aimlessly grinding the railway for weeks, months, perhaps even years, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll run out of track to skirt or blank walls to tag here. Again, it might not be the most complex mobile game on the market, and it might lack the “special” ingredient to give it that little extra edge over other big-budget monopolizers on the circuit. That being said, for what it does offer—a quick fix for an afternoon slump that can keep you swiping for hours on end—it stands out as the perfect pocket burner for any fan of the endless runner universe.