Talking Tom Hero Dash

Endless runner games tend to follow a relatively straightforward formula, with players trying to cover more distance and collect more items than they did the time before. A lot of these games put their own unique and creative twists on that formula to stand out among the competition, but then there are games like Talking Tom Hero Dash, which follow the formula in such a generic way that the whole thing feels bland, repetitive, and just plain boring. Before long, you're simply going through the motions with this title, which loses its appeal rather quickly.

Talking Tom Hero Dash looks good enough. It's a colorful, cartoonish world that younger kids will likely find appealing. The difficulty's also almost nonexistent, which might keep that young audience from getting frustrated, but it never offers enough challenge to give any sense of accomplishment, either. But the worst part of the game is how absolutely bloated it is with ads. It's bad enough that random pop-up banner ads infect nearly every menu screen, but that's nothing compared to the ads the game pushes kids to watch for some minor in-game bonus. Some of these ads can run 30 seconds or more. Worse still, these ads are being shoved at the game's much younger market, prompting kids to install all kinds of new software on their mobile devices. While this could be considered just a problem with the way these ads are designed, the simple fact is Talking Tom Hero Dash spends almost as much time pushing ads on kids as it does offering any real gameplay. That issue makes it harder to enjoy Talking Tom Hero Dash for longer than a few game runs.