Speed Forge Extreme is a snappy little racing game for the iPhone or iPod Touch. I love this game — I just wish I were better at it.

There’s a surprising amount of content in Speed Forge Extreme for such a tiny package. You start with one vehicle and can unlock five more as you progress through the game. Each vehicle has its own stats for mass, speed, agility, engine and ammunition. Since my personal car skills rank with knowing where to put gas, oil and wiper fluid, these stats weren’t that important to me, but they are provided. To me, the cool thing about the vehicles is that they’re all low-flying futuristic aircraft. There are no cars here. You’re literally flying in this one.

There are a whopping 16 different race tracks in Speed Forge Extreme. You have two different tracks to begin with, though I recommend starting with the first one, the open pit mine, until you get a feel for the game. You only have to race in the mine. The factory track adds the missiles!

There are three levels of play for the less skilled racers (such as myself). Easy mode was easy. I even won a few races in this mode — in spite of all the walls I hit on the way. Regular mode had me in the bottom of the pack. I didn’t try hard mode; do I look nuts to you? Don’t answer that.

Speed Forge Extreme makes excellent use of the motion sensing abilities of the iPod. Steering is sensitive — maybe a bit too sensitive for me (at least on the default setting). The standard driving controls are all with the motion sensors of the iPod. I tilt left or right to turn left or right and tilt forward to accelerate. I’m not sure which braking scheme I was using. I was either going full bore or exploding as I hit another wall. I loved that when I turned, the craft tilted in the direction I was turning and my wings moved accordingly. A flat 2-D turn would have been disappointing.

You do have the option to customize the controls. There are actually five default control schemes, and you can also adjust the steering sensitivity — something I should have done sooner. If you don’t want to move the iPod to steer, accelerate or brake, you can set it to tap controls on the touchscreen. I enjoyed the more visceral thrill of moving the whole iPod.

In easy mode anyway, my little ship was pretty sturdy. I scraped the wall plenty of times before I actually blew apart. And the only penalty for dying was lost time. I had a brand spanking new ship there and ready to go in mere seconds.

I liked the graphics in Speed Forge Extreme quite a bit. My only complaint in that area was more of an iPod thing: I had trouble seeing the screen if the ambient light in the room was too bright. There is an option to set the game to overbright mode, but you’re still going to see better in a darker playing area. (Gamers don’t really live in caves or their parents’ basements — that’s just an ugly rumor — most of the time.)

The techno music kept a perfect background beat to the game and the sound effects were done well. They really nailed that hitting the wall and blowing up sound. I would know.

The missile piece was easy to learn on the second track — the factory. Available missiles are on the track as glowing green cubes (with a missile picture on the side). Just drive over it to collect your new armament. I had a red button appear on the right side of the iPod screen in perfect range of my thumb. My little target circle went red when another driver was in my sights, and I had only to tap the circle to let fly. The game was also kind enough to let me know when another missile was incoming, just in case I wanted to try and dodge or something silly like that. I did think it was funny that even after I ran into a wall (again) and blew up my ship, my new ship still had the missile I’d picked up before my little mishap. Those suckers are tough.

My overall impression of Speed Forge Extreme was that I was getting to act out the racing circuit for the pod-racers from Star Wars — but only the good parts. The annoying kid and goofy alien got to stay home. I got the blinding speed, deadly turns and the joy of trying to shoot down the other racers before they could get me first. Good times.