Those Minions from the Despicable Me films seem to get everywhere, don’t they? They have even now got their own film, which is called Minions and will appear in US theaters from July 10. While the wait continues for that, though, you could suitably prepare yourself for an onslaught of the endearing little yellow people by playing Despicable Me: Minion Rush. This popular free iOS game has been available for a while, but has just received a significant update aimed at even further boosting its appeal.
Minion Rush is a straightforward runner – where, in each level, you play a Minion who automatically hurtles through beautifully imaginative environments. Each level has its own objective for completion and progression to the next level; this objective can be as simple as ‘slide under three different obstacles’ or ‘keep running for thirty seconds’. Most of the gameplay, however, involves simply jumping over obstacles, sliding under others and collecting bananas.
And therein lies the rub; despite some intriguing distractions from the main game, such as a shop where you can spend those bananas on new powers, we found Minion Rush slightly too repetitive too often to sustain our interest for too long. Still, the major new addition to the game, the Minion Race mode where you can race against other minions and attack them with offensive and defensive gadgets in the style of Mario Kart, is fantastic fun. Looks like there is some life in those little yellow mischief-makers yet!