Parents' Guide to Highway Heat

This racing game crashes as soon as you hit the gas pedal thanks to its lack of instructions, accelerated speeds, and heavy reliance on advertising unless you pay to have them removed. Highway Heat seems to have a misleading description about what you're trying to do from the start by claiming that the process of moving your car forward draws the next stretch of road to drive on. Actually, you're driving in the sky, and no new road appears when you swipe across the screen -- which is too bad, because that might be helpful. Regardless, the action moves fast, and players don't have a lot of time to contemplate decisions. As a result, they may find they run into obstacles -- literally -- and then the round ends. They can watch an ad to keep going, or try again to make it through the course from the beginning. Levels get more difficult as the game progresses, but as gamers get the hang of directing their car up and down, their ability to avoid things should improve, too.

The app would benefit from clearer instructions, because players don't get much information about which actions earn money or what they can eventually spend it on when they start playing -- and they'll need to play for awhile to earn the $25,000-and-up that's needed to purchase most of the vehicles. But the abundance of ads is the real issue. They appear often, are lengthy, and may require you to click an x on two screens to get back to the game, which slows down the playing experience considerably. Because the rounds move so quickly, the ad breaks feel particularly cumbersome and slow -- which may cause some gamers to hit the breaks on playing, unless they want to shell out $2.99 to remove them.