Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The game play of this app is horrendous. Don't even try to play it on a tablet-- the graphics do not scale well at all. 'Retro' does NOT mean 'call our game retro so that we can be lazy and make crap graphics that don't scale well to different displays'. 'Retro' DOES mean: simple graphics with EXCELLENT game play. This game is an epic fail. Forget trying to control the 'car' and forg-- never mind the game, we have more important things to discuss in this review. It's a waste of time to even review this app AS just a game because it breaks every rule of fair play in terms of what a paid app should do and should be. I'll explain: This app is LOADED with active ADware and SPYware and "Social Media" add-on garbage and contains very suspect permissions. I shall list them below: ADWARE: (Keep in mind that it doesn't matter if the ads are "displayed", the code, when running, still sends user data back to the ad providers-- it still acts as "spyware" in this case), -AdMob -AdSense -Amazon Mobile Ads -Chartboost SPYWARE/ANALYTICS: -Flurry -Google Analytics 'SOCIAL MEDIA' ADDONS: -Amazon Gamecircle (At least this one IS opt-in. BUT it's there so I'm listing it) -SWARM (See: swarmconnect(DOT)com/monetization for all you need to know about SWARM's main focus) -Facebook Wow, that's a LOT for a paid game, yes? ALL of it undisclosed, until now. If they have nothing to hide then why are they hiding it? Well, I'm happy to shine a light on this because I know that all cockroaches scatter when you shine a light on them. This app is a travesty in terms of the lack of respect it gives to the user who (when not the FAOTD) would PAY REAL MONEY for this app! Developers like this have no excuse for this behavior. It's incredibly disrespectful. And there is no privacy policy from this developer posted anywhere, either. Another HUGE red flag! Now, let's look at the permissions. The game wants four. In combination, it's not pretty. They are: android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE (App can tell whether WIFI is turned on or not) android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (App can write data, such as tracking logs, to storage for retrieval later-- even after a reboot) android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE (App can get a "map" of the network, to find alternate ways to connect to it, for example) android.permission.INTERNET (Full, unrestricted Internet Access. If there is a way, this app can use it.) Now then, imagine this scenario: Using permission one, above, the app sees that WIFI is turned off, so, using permission three, it looks for another way to send that data to the third-party lowlifes that this app is connected with. If it finds one, then it routs to it using permission four. If permission three fails (because, say, WIFI is off and the device is not a phone, so no 3G, LTE, etc. either or even a Bluetooth tether) then permission two can be used to cache the logs and global variables the app collects so that it can "sync" later once there IS a connection. Is this app doing just that? Hard to say for 100% certain but I can tell you that I see all kinds of network traffic to these ad providers when this app starts up using my test bench. This app and this developer IS up to something and frankly, I don't even CARE what it is at this point.. I must rate this ONE STAR and beg of you to stay clear of this app if you value your privacy! It's not worth the risk! The game sucks anyway compared to just about every other racing game that I've ever played on Android. It's not even worth free much less actual money. Oh, one more thing, please: Amazon? You rock, but why? Why?? Did you forget to feed the manatee and due to its low blood sugar it's picking the wrong balls? <--South Park reference added for fun, because something needs to be fun-- this game is NOT. ;)