Gameloft, N-Gage
Ubisoft, Xbox
Highly rated by all who have played it with gamers
giving it a generally higher score than the critics who
have worried a bit about thin plots and self-referential
jokes. CT has effectively been made a little easier by
the fact that Sam Fisher's attacks are more effective.
DigiRed, N-Gage
This is quite cute in a lot of ways even though it's
rated 12+ ... mostly because of the concepts I guess.
I mostly don't get ratings. Why is it that it's OK
for people to be dismembered while at the first sign
of a breast, or of the idea of sex (never mind the
actuality) the ratings dears will be heading for
their X stamps.
Anyway, one character used to be a prostitute and there's a
lot of develish stuff about with the gate to hell
having been opened and much death and pestilence
resulting. Your job, should you accept it, is to,
well ... guess!
There's a little pop-up fairy who guides you
and gives you mission statements, and a whole bunch
of nasties to dispose of in your task of saving
humanity. The style is action adventure and it is
kinda fun.
(Mr Twitch)
SCEA, PSP
An update of the old 1999 Playstation game which has a
boy called Spike trying to stave off bad monkey stuff which
includes rewriting history to make monkeys rule (they won
didn't they). Anyway, it's a fun and attractive game that
looks better now than it did then. The only quibble is the
controls which didn't make the transfer quite so well.
Mstation Games Review
Fri, 01 Apr 2005
The Gameloft people have a really nice touch with
interface design. This one is cool looking and nice
to use. They've also pretty much got the balance
right of how much you can get on the N-Gage screen.
This game is in full 3D and has nice surface
renderings as well.
This time we're somewhere in the Pacific and Sam
Fisher's job is to stop an impending world war. To
that end we can stealthily crawl about the place and
then zap the baddies as they come along. There's
a training section to get us started and then off
we go. Once we're going we can play with three
friends over Bluetooth or get onto N-Gage Arena
and play with anyone anywhere. It's not too bad.
(Mr Twitch)
Big news this month is the PSP release in the USA.
Just how well it's doing is hard to tell as reporters
are variously reporting a sell-out or stacks of units
left on the shelves.
Whatever. It's a cool looking unit with nice graphics
and an interesting future as far as hacking it to do
other things is concerned. Already there's a bunch of
things that people are working on.
In London, England there was an announcement that
Game Stars Live, the new consumer show that debuted
last year is no more ... already! This is the show
that "took out" the older ECTS as well. Can these
people do anything right?
So the largest market in these parts is without a
consumer show despite the fact that last year's couldn't
have been anything other than a financial success.
If it wasn't, it certainly wasn't due to the gamers,
who turned out in big numbers to pay over-the-odds
money to get in.
According to reports the villains have been Sony,
Microsoft, and Electronic Arts. Now how predictable
was that?
Hang your heads in shame corporate games people!
After dealing with some of the arrogant turds connected with
marketing we can quite see how this came to be but
there are good guys out there too so hopefully they,
as a group, will see it isn't just about them.
Activision, N-Gage
Hmmm, well, here we are in WWII again and it takes me
a little time to figure out who the bad guys are and
then to spot them once I know who they are ... and why
does that dorky guy keep yelling at me to give covering
fire irrespective of whether or not there is any
covering fire? There's no soft intro here. The game
opens and two minutes later I'm toast usually.
Never mind. Practise, practise or that old saw "If at
first you don't succeed ... give up!"
There is a lot of detail here and a lot of stuff to do
including play with up to four players. If this is your
genre then I don't see why you wouldn't like it.
(toasted nails)
