All About N-Gage - Gsm Technic Service

Official Screenshots:

The only info we have about this so far is the official press release.

Yes the thing that stands out about Brothers in Arms…

No it’s not - it’s stupid, it will drive…

Enough about the cack-handed…

What happens when you only uploade the first 20 seconds of a screenshot - would you buy this game?

Okay, I’ve paid my money now, can I see more than the first 20 seconds?

Yes, the thing that stands out about Brothers in Arms on the N-Gage isn’t the fact that we’ve got one of the brand names over from the console world, it isn’t that we’ve got a decent 3D shooter game, it isn’t that we’ve got a solid graphics work out for the N-Gage next gen platform. It’s the fact that Gameloft, in what can only be described as a visionary understanding of how human psychology works, think that a 20 second demo of a game is going to help sales.

No it’s not - it’s utterly, utterly stupid, it will drive people away, and quite frankly if I wasn’t reviewing this title I would have skipped over the game, no matter how good it is, because Gameloft doesn’t care about me and or trust me to judge the game on its own merits. Let me point out that the original Doom had 27 levels. The demo for Doom consisted of the first 9 levels, in full. No time limits; no limited replay counters; but it became one of the biggest games ever.

Enough about the cack-handed demo (but lets hope someone takes note) and have a look at Brothers in Arms in action. What we have here, as mentioned already, is a 3D shooter, with the camera sitting behind your soldier (who appears to be called Barney). You and your squad have landed on the shores of Normandy just after D-Day, and you’ll work through a number of missions, getting closer to Berlin as you progress through the game.

Those of you expecting the same innovations as you would find on Halo (on the XBox or PC) might be in for a disappointment. But that’s a good thing, because the N-Gage platform needs a simpler control system. There’s an argument that modern first person shooters on consoles can be insanely complex, with two analogue sticks needed just to move you around and look, then all the buttons hanging off and used in combinations that are more complicated than a shadow puppet of the Golden Gate Bridge.

What you have in Brothers in Arms is a simple control set. Left/Right/Forward/Backward on the cursor, sidestepping with a pair of number keys, and hitting ‘0′ to aim your rifle by peering down the barrel - being World War Two, there are no telescopic sights or laser guided bullets. You want a better view, you have to get closer.

And here’s where Brothers in Arms makes best use of the Nseries platform, because the graphics are about as good as you can make them on a QVGA screen, with the technology available. You have to remember that this is on a mobile phone, with limited power and processor cycles, so no putting it next to an HD game on your 42 inch plasma TV; take that into consideration and the graphics here are impressive. I’m not going to say they’re jaw dropping, amazing, or the best on a mobile platform, mainly because the look of the game seems very reminiscent of Ashen on the original N-Gage and N-Gage QD. What I will say is that everything is clear and understandable, you can tell buildings, tanks, terrains, friend or foe apart easily.

But here’s the thing about the graphics on a small screen, and here’s where putting a shooter on the N-Gage is a risky move. While there is an auto-aiming component when you run around the map, you can also stop and go for more precise aimed shots. Trying to do a decent head shot from more than about 10 meters (according to the in game rangefinder) in this way is a matter of pixel perfect precision. Tiny taps on the direction pad while in the aim mode are needed to get right onto the head, which may or may or may not be moving.

I’d also love to say that this slows the game down, but in all honesty it doesn’t. Like the heavily laden soldier that you are, Brothers in Arms feels sluggish. Now by that I don’t mean it has a poor frame rate or that the graphics and sound are a few moments behind any action you make. No what I mean is that the gameplay itself is slow.

This is meant to be combat, fast, furious, with strategic moving around terrain, taking cover as needed, circling around the enemy to shoot them in the back before they see you.

Brothers in Arms provides absolutely none of that. You run at one speed and there’s no sense of urgency. When you’re being shot at and running for cover, things happen at the same speed as when you’re ambling down a country lane at the end of a level. There’s no adrenaline rush as the bullets start flying overhead.

Oh, and forget about circling round the enemy. You map be in a mapped out area, but this is a linear route of gameplay. You’re travelling down a fixed corridor created by the programmers, with no significant branching away or choice of direction possible. Sure, you have blocks of trees and boulders for cover, but do you get a choice between a frontal assault, or edging along a river bank? Nope. Straight ahead and fight, soldier!

Also, for a mobile game, the save game mechanism seems inadequate. You can jump to any level you have passed, and to the subsequent unpassed level, or return to an intermediate checkpoint you pass in the current level. It would be nice to be able to save at any point. The whole point of a mobile game is that you are mobile - pausing and backgrounding the app isn’t enough in my book.

The online options is… a high score table. Which is… a nice idea. Next!

My one worry with Brothers in Arms is that it’s supremely easy for people to compare this to other console versions, such as that on Sony’s Playstation Portable. (fx: Ewan leans over to his shelf and picks up his PSP and Brothers in Arms). I’ve argued before that Nokia need to be very careful with any situation where they end up going head to head in comparison to other platforms. They need to maximize their own platform strengths, not be placed alongside the strengths of another platform.

But forget all that, because Brothers in Arms actually works well on a mobile. Sure it’s not a deep game, with tactics or thinking required. Neither is it a complex 3D shooter with sculpted landscapes, deformable terrain, and massive areas to explore. It’s effectively a shoot-em up. Dodge the occasional bullet, go where you need to, press fire and use up your infinite supply of ammo. It plays well, it looks good, and you do get a feeling of wanting to finish just one more level.

Joining the launch line-up of titles for the N-Gage Platform is Gameloft’s Brain Challenge. While there will be a handful of ‘big’ titles for the N-Gage, Brain Challenge is not one of them - but there’s nothing wrong with that. While the flash titles make up the column inches, it’s games like this that are going to be the bread and butter earners for Nokia and its partners.

It would be mighty interesting to see just how well Brain Challenge does in the ‘revenue earned’ column after three or four months. I would not be surprised to see this title become a solid and continuing revenue stream for the Finns. Nothing here is especially new, but it fits well into the genre of ‘play a little puzzle every day’ that was started by Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training on the Nintendo DS.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, you play a series of mini-games each day, each lasting a few minutes at most. The scores for these games are combined to give you a ‘daily score’ and this is compared to previous scores. If the theory of exercising your mental ability holds true, you should see a steady improvement. Rather than progress through a games storyline, you progress in yourself, creating a much better and more rounded person in the process.

Or you could argue that developers have found a way to write really simple games and package them up for profit, but only a cynic would think that….

Gameloft should be congratulated for some good presentation here - the games (12 in total, I believe) are grouped into the four areas they are testing, namely Maths (annoyingly labelled Math in my version…), Memory, Visual and Logic. The games are all controlled with the d-pad (and the occasional button press), so there are very few issues with the controls. Which is good - the point of these games is for you not to be thinking about what key to press next, but simply to think.

Two examples of the mini-games should make my point clear. The first is Balance, coming under the Logic section. You’re presented with a set of scales and asked which item is heavier. Initially this is pretty easy - just go for the one which has dropped the scales. But as you progress through your 60 second game, and as you play it more and more often, you’ll come across more difficult challenges, with multiple items on each side of the scales, or even scales on top of scales. Yet you’re asked to work out which of two single items is heavier with a flick to left or right of the cursor. Fun indeed… well it is to me.

Trout, under the Maths section, is another example of something that looks simple, and is… if you ignored the timer. Given a grid of numbers, a start point, and then a mathematical operator (e.g. ‘+4′) you have to jump from your target square (say it has 17 in it) to the square that is next in order… i.e. 17+4=21. So jump left, right, up or down to the square with 21 in it; then 25; then 29… Make five jumps and you get a new grid and new modifier. Much like Balance, and many of the other games, it’s a basic task, but when put under pressure to do as many as you can against the clock, that’s when it gets interesting.

There’s nothing especially new in this mix, nor are the games amazingly ‘out there’ - we’re talking basic pattern recognition in many of the games, some quick mental mathematics and some cunning psychological tricks when you’re counting (such as four red number threes), but the games are clear, surprisingly fun, and, by limiting each game to a time limit of 60 seconds, stay fresh and challenging over the time you’ll be playing the game - and as you play, you’ll unlock more of the mini-games.
While the idea of a learning curve goes somewhat against the grain of the daily brain game genre, Gameloft’s unlocking strategy keeps the title from going stale. Coupled with the ten minutes a day nature of the game, I think Brain Challenge is going to do very well.

– Ewan Spence, April 2008

Gameplay

Bounce: Boing Voyage is a 3D sequel to the original Bounce games which many of you may remember from some of Nokia’s older phones. The original game involved guiding a red ball through various levels, and the new version follows the same basic idea.

Since Nokia first announced it was going to become involved in the gaming industry, many people asked what their mascot would be. Sega has Sonic, Nintendo has Mario, what is Nokia’s? Well, this is it, Bounce is as close as you’re ever going to get to an old-style mascot for Nokia. The character has more personality than the faceless Snake, and already has a lot of iconic value thanks to its earlier appearances in 2D on some very big-selling phone models.

You start the game as a red rubber ball in a cartoon forest, where an evil floating cube is hypnotising the creatures of the forest to cut down all the trees (this is rather a psychedelic game on many levels). As you pursue the cube you journey through three zones, each with four levels. The levels themselves are subdivided into linked sections which you progress through linearly, and each section contains some kind of puzzle or challenge which may require dexterity, clever thinking, or both. As you clear a level the next level is unlocked, and these are all accessible from the game world map so you can go back to them if you like. Levels take a while to load, perhaps 10 or 15 seconds on average, but once you’re in a level the different sections load instantly so the overall loading time is very low.

The easy way to complete a level is to just go through it ignoring all the bonuses, but if you want to score maximum points you have to collect all the glowing spheres, and this can be very tricky as some of them are hidden or in awkward-to-reach places.

As you progress through the game you will be able to turn into two other kinds of ball, and all three types have their own abilities. Many later puzzles require you to use all of these abilities, and it may become easier to collect spheres on earlier levels if you go back to them after gaining a new kind of ball. The pace of the game varies tremendously, with some sections moving at very high speeds while others force you to stop and think.

It’s very very easy to learn how to play Bounce as each gameplay element is introduced one at a time, with the first levels effectively acting as a tutorial.

There are also three separate Arena levels, but more about those in the Arena part of this review.

Bounce Boing Voyage feels like a combination of Mario 64, Sonic The Hedgehog and Super Monkey Ball, and is very console-like. This could easily be a Nintendo DS game for example.

Graphics & Sound

The game looks wonderful, it has nice bright colours and well-designed scenery, with a fast and smooth 3D engine that never slows down even when the ball is moving at high speed. There’s a good variety of scenery and objects, and even relatively small sections can seem large thanks to the careful level design.

There are numerous cut scenes, most which use the game’s own 3D graphic engine so they blend in with the gameplay perfectly. Many of the images the game uses are unusual and memorable, with a combination of cute animals and surreal psychedelia. There are also a few cut scenes which use 2D artwork that have an ink-heavy comic style.

The sound is great, there’s a lovely soundtrack that starts out jolly and gets darker towards the end of the game. The music complements the graphics wonderfully. The sound effects are good too, with a variety of noises for the different ball types and some amusing things thrown in here and there (such as the clucking that the giant cube birds make when you step on them).

Two of the three Arena-oriented levels, the left involves cannons while the right involves high speed

N-Gage Arena

There are three Arena-based levels which you can unlock by collecting enough spheres from the main levels. They appear in the centre of the game map so you can go to them at any time.

The Arena levels have no real end points and you can’t die, they’re simply contests to score as highly as possible within a time limit. You score automatically by just being in the level but to get a good score you should collect coins (which add points at a faster rate) and rings (which extend the time limit). Each level has a completely different design, requiring different kinds of skills to do well in it, and people who do well on one Arena level may not do so well on another.

Scores are uploaded to an online league table so people can compare their rankings.

TV & Keyboard Test

Some N-Gage-compatible phones (e.g. Nokia N82, N95, N95 8GB, N96) have a TV Out feature which lets you connect the phone to a television set. This can be used for playing N-Gage games, or for any other phone function.

All N-Gage phones are compatible with Bluetooth keyboards that use the HID Bluetooth standard, and such a keyboard can be used to control games or any other phone function.

Bounce is perfectly playable through TV Out, it’s very much like playing an old console game. The colours are lovely and bright though the 3D textures look pixelly. The music is nice to hear through the television’s speakers.

Our Bluetooth keyboard worked absolutely brilliantly with the game, showing an instant response to every key press. Note that you have to redefine the “jump” and “change shape” keys from the settings menu when in horizontal mode, because these functions are mapped to the phone’s gaming keys by default. Redefining them to 1 and 2 seemed to work well.

Overall

Bounce: Boing Voyage has lovely graphics, a gorgeous soundtrack, fun gameplay, a very welcoming learning curve, and above all bags and bags of charm. If you complete the game and pay close attention to the end credits, you’ll see an example of how the developers have gone beyond the call of duty with this project.

It’s a very “player-friendly” game, it never traps you in an unfair situation, and if you do die you always feel that you deserved it. If the worst happens, it puts you in the nearest safe place to where you died so you don’t have to repeat anything you’ve already done. Bounce maximises fun and minimises drudgery, which is ideal for a phone game.

Some hardcore gamers may say Bounce is too easy and too short, but they’re wrong. Firstly, simply going through the levels is much easier than completing them at 100%, and completing the game the easiest way only earns you about 200 pickup points out of 1000. Secondly, there are the Arena levels to keep the gameplay going even when you’ve fully completed the story mode at 100%. Thirdly… this game costs 7 euros. That’s about one sixth of the price of one Nintendo DS game. The amount of gameplay you’re getting for your money is huge, and it’s definitely the best 7 euros this reviewer has ever spent on a brand new game.

It’s not perfect: the gameplay isn’t as original as Reset Generation or Mile High Pinball, it might have been nice to have more hidden areas and different routes through levels (perhaps based on ball type) to increase replay value, more difficult puzzles in the later levels would have made them much more satisfying, and of course more levels in general would be very welcome. Some kind of multiplayer mode, either online or Bluetooth-based, would have been the icing on the cake.

However, for 7 euros Bounce is excellent value for money. It’s a carefully-crafted very playable 3D platformer which has managed to find its own style without being too derivative, and it successfully reinvents a forgotten game series. Hopefully we’ll see more Bounce games (and more games in general) from the developer Rovio as this is a brilliant debut for them on N-Gage. They clearly know what they’re doing.