I was overjoyed when Tree Men Games brought their chaotic car chase game PAKO 2 ($1.99) to iOS earlier this year after its well-received launch on Steam last summer, and it will easily be finding a spot on my favorite games of 2018 list when this year comes to an end. However, I’m also a longtime fan of their original PAKO – Car Chase Simulator ($1.99) and in fact while both games are rooted in the same core idea they’re actually different enough from one another that I’ve never gotten rid of the original PAKO in favor of PAKO 2. Instead they live happily right alongside one another on my iPhone. However, the first PAKO hadn’t received an update since the huge “Pakocalypse" update more than two years ago, so it was missing some of the modern features I value like full screen iPhone X support. I figured that the original PAKO’s time in the sun was over with the sequel being the focus of the developer’s attention, but I still held out a sliver of hope that we’d see an update someday.

And that hope has been rewarded this week with a new update for PAKO – Car Chase Simulator which adds full iPhone X support, iCloud progress saving, an anti-aliasing option for graphics, and lots of tweaks and bug fixes. The game truly looks fantastic utilizing the entire screen of the iPhone X and whatever those “tweaks and bug fixes" are sure have worked as the whole game just feels overall snappier and more solid now. Maybe that’s just my imagination, but I’ll take it. If you’re a fan of PAKO 2 but never played the original and want to see a more arcadey high-scoring focused take on the car chase gameplay, definitely give PAKO a shot, as the game has travelled around with me from device to device for over four years now and thanks to this latest update I have no intention on changing that.