All About N-Gage - Gsm Technic Service

So far, all we have about this game is the official press release.

Gameplay

Space Impact: Kappa Base (SIKB) is an old-fashioned scrolling shoot-em-up, inspired by the original Space Impact games which were embedded on Nokia’s older mobile phones such as the 3310.

In Kappa Base you pilot a craft (or “skyblade”) through ten levels of baddies and hazards in space, in the upper atmosphere and near the ground. The plot goes like this: the Earth has become so polluted and difficult to live on that some humans have chosen to alter themselves mechanically and become a race of cyborgs called “MEKS”. The MEKS have decided that the remaining unaltered humans are “obsoletes” and should be destroyed. Cue the usual man vs machine malarkey…

The plot has various interesting twists and turns and there’s a sequel-hunting ending, but the main aim of this game is to score well. This isn’t the kind of title where you play through it once and feel that you’ve “beaten” it. In fact SIKB’s playing structure is much more like Mario Kart, as you receive a grade for each level and the challenge is to go back again and again to improve the grade.

The gameplay revolves around choosing the appropriate skyblade and weapon loads for each level. As you collect money in the game you unlock more options, and eventually you can choose from eight skyblades and seventeen types of weapons. Because you can take several weapons at once on the same craft, there are 200 different combinations of weapons load, and what you choose will make a lot of difference. Some levels are almost impossible with a bad choice of weapons, but become much easier when you select a more appropriate combination. The choice of skyblade can also be important, as they have different properties in terms of speed, armour, and kinetic energy gathering.

That last phrase might have sounded a bit weird, as it refers to an unusual central concept of SIKB: to build up the energy for certain powerful “kinetic” weapons, you have to let enemy bullets graze you. Once the kinetic meter has been filled, you can use the special weapon. The kinetic weapons aspect turn the usual gameplay on its head, as you often find yourself desperately trying to get hit by bullets so that you can use the special weapon and wipe out all the baddies on the screen. The kinetic aspect also comes into play when you’re trying to get a high score, as there’s a separate bonus meter which fills up as you get hit.

You occasionally receive wingmen to help you, but they generally just sit there shooting and getting hit, rarely moving about. Your bullets don’t harm them so you can just ignore them if you like, or you can dive for cover behind them if you’re worried about taking damage.

The controls on SIKB are very simple: you move with the direction pad and shooting is automatic. You can optionally set it to shoot manually, but there’s little point in using this as you have unlimited ammo. The only other control is pressing 2 to fire your special weapon, which is not covered by the autofire because its use can depend on building up precious kinetic energy.

Rather awkwardly, there seems to be no way to play the game in horizontal mode. You can physically hold the phone horizontally of course, but it’s difficult to use the keypad on slider models, and SIKB did not use the N81’s gaming keys at all.

There are four savegame slots, and three characters to choose from for each slot. The choice of character doesn’t make a huge amount of difference, it mostly just determines which skyblade is unlocked at the beginning of the game, and it also means the cut scenes are slightly different.

You can choose to play the game in easy mode or normal mode. Easy mode is very easy indeed, this reviewer played the game all the way through on the first go in easy mode, but normal mode offers much more of a challenge. The levels are the same in both modes, but you have four continues in easy mode compared to one in normal mode, and the enemies are harder to destroy in normal mode.

Graphics & Sound

The gameplay and most of the graphics are in 2D, but there are some 3D objects and enemies too, and the mixture works very well indeed, with a pleasing alien look. There are 3D renderings of all the craft and weapons during the weapons selection process, and the larger “boss” enemies are all in 3D as well. The backgrounds are nicely detailed and varied, ranging from snowscapes to forests to space stations to alien planets.

The speed of the graphics can get very fast indeed and on some levels it’s extremely frantic, like watching a video on fast-forward. There are often many dozens of separate moving objects on the screen at once, and trying to find your ship among all the enemies and bullets can be like trying to see dandruff in a snowstorm.

Cut scenes consist of anime-ish characters with text and dramatic music in the background. These are sprinkled throughout the game, appearing between and in the middle of levels as the plot unfolds. It gives the game a real 16-bit feel, which is a good thing in this style of game.

Soundwise the game’s soundtrack has a nice mixture of ambient and dramatic music, and the very last level sounds like a dance version of a Gregorian Chant. All of the music enhances the game without getting in the way. The music and sound effects have separate volume controls, so you can mix them to your own liking.

N-Gage Arena

As befits an old-style shooter, the only online feature is a “World Battle” global high score table. We could not get the Arena connection to work in SIKB though, so we couldn’t see if the promised clans feature was present.

Overall

Whether you like SIKB depends on what kind of gameplay you enjoy most. Although the offline game is called “story mode”, the aim is really to play and replay levels constantly chasing after a better grade, and to unlock more items.

If you just want to play through the game once, then you will be missing the point of SIKB. This is an “old school” scrolling shooter where high scorers receive the greatest rewards, with a smattering of 3D graphics to give it a 2000s look.

In short, if you like classic shoot-em-ups then SIKB is for you. If you hate them, stay away.

PS: You can see a gameplay video of Space Impact: Kappa Base over on the Unofficial Nokia Gaming Blog.

Long term readers of All About N-Gage will know that I am a big fan of the Snake game, and especially where Nokia have taken it , from the little bundled game on the Nokia 5110, through the release of Snakes for the original N-Gage, to the subsequent polish of the code for S60 3rd Edition devices (such as the N95). SO… the sight of Snakes Subsonic in the second generation N-Gage platform was like waving a vial of white powder at me.

The graphics and tweaks just looked fantastic, with more enemies crawling around the playfield, the spectre of an evil snake getting in your way, and the fact that this was going to be even more of a mind-bending playfield, with horizontal and vertical surfaces to climb through just adding to the visual fun.

And then I played it.

It’s just a horrible mess on top of a cracking game – because make no bones about it there is a great game here. Having taken the basic principle of ‘move around the grid and eat things’ of the pure Snake game, the arcade elements added in enhance the gameplay tremendously. The controls are still a relatively simple left and right, with the fire button to activate your pick-ups, back and forward to give a temporary boost or brake to the speed of the snake, and a key to toggle between the 3D and 2D (top down) view of the game. That’s it, and they are all very responsive – there’s little lag between the keypress and the action.

As you tour around the almost Escher-esque game world of walls, ramps, curves and tunnels, you can pick up the green power pills and a ‘bonus’ strip of blue pick-ups will then appear somewhere on the board. These are worth a lot of points, and multiply up if you can eat a whole strip without stopping – 10 points per square on the first strip, 20 per square on the next, 30, 40, and so on. Given that you’re looking to score a certain number of points per level (against the clock!), successfully navigating these strips is one of the major keys to getting past the later levels, especially once they start twisting and turning.

You’ve got speed up (and slow down) squares in addition to the temporary changes you can make to the snake, although these are usually in the most horrible places around the board, designed to disrupt any rhythm that you’ve built up in your mind to keep you on course, so you’ll need to be constantly focussing on the board, the environment, and where your snake is (and was, don’t forget your tail!). To add to the mix, in Snakes Subsonic you can go on the offence by picking up rockets to use against your opponents.

So where does it all go wrong?

That’s actually tough to detail, but let me try. For our American readers, it’s an Edsel; a clunker. There are so many tiny little things that are just not right, which mount up over time to just destroy any enjoyment of the game. For a ‘pick up and play’ title, where the first impressions and memories of the game are key to having you return, Snakes Subsonic just keeps presenting you with reasons to not pick it up.

Let’s start with the speed while playing the game – overall, it’s just too slow. I’ve always expected these arcade versions of Snakes to be fast, giving you just enough time to plan your next move, but not much more than that. Perhaps the clue was in ‘subsonic,’ because it’s certainly not Snakes Supersonic. With this slow speed, you might think this is because the rest of the play environment has a lot going on, and needs the extra processor time. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case either.

The frame rate seems low, to the point where it does visibly stutter on the screen (and this on the games-speedy N95), especially when you flip from one surface plane to another – when you make the transition, the whole play field rotates to keep the camera in the same relative position to the snake, which is the effect you would expect but it is comparatively lethargic and just feels clunky and poorly animated.

And finally, perhaps most frustratingly, there are numerous instances of pop-up. This is where items in the distance are not drawn until you get closer to them. So what looks like an empty playing field in Snakes Subsonic suddenly has a green translucent wall appear when you are 8 or 9 squares away from it. This is just frustrating and also really un-intuitive, because single items, power-ups and roving enemies are visible at a much greater distance. When you’re planning a route a few turns ahead, you don’t want to be thinking ‘what if there’s a wall there I can’t see yet’?

There’s just no ‘slickness’ in the game play; it feels like Snakes by numbers, as if the programmers were doing their job, not because they loved it or truly believed in the project, but because they were getting paid to do it. Perhaps the change in developers from the first N-Gage developers Iomo to Barking Lizard has something to do with this? Whatever it is, there have been some amazing decisions in the design process on this title.

First you don’t see it… now you do. Ouch.

There are also two idiosyncrasies in the game that really send me up the wall. First of all, and a really small but frustrating audio item for me, is that it’s impossible to switch off the background music but keep the sound effects playing – the volume control acts on all the sounds so you can have the full mix, or no mix at all.

Second is what happens when you die in a level. You get the death screen, one of your lives just pops out of existence (there’s no stylish fade over a second, just an instant delete as it slides to the centre of the screen)… and you get a loading screen! Nothing more than a pixel bar across the screen with ‘Loading…’ flashing out at you. I understand a long loading time for a new level, but to not have the starting state stored in memory for a quick restart, and instead asking the player in a ‘fast paced arcade game’ to wait a relatively long time to try again is an… ehrm… interesting design decision.

It pains me to do this, it really does, but I can’t recommend Snakes Subsonic. While there is a good, perhaps even a great game in here somewhere, it’s hampered by too many small failings, performance issues and poor design decisions that the game-play and intriguing 3D levels can’t overcome.

What I would recommend is to download the original Snakes game (available online and via the Download application on most devices) for your Nseries device. It’s free, fast, doesn’t have the faults on display here, and is playable and addictive. The biggest condemnation of Snakes Subsonic is that, to the untrained eye, ‘Snakes’ looks the sequel, not the ‘merely updated for compatibility’ three year old precursor.

Gameplay

For those who have been on another planet, the Sims series is essentially a computerised dolls house where you can take care of people and/or animals usually in a normal-looking domestic environment. Sims 2: Pets on N-Gage concentrates on bringing up a puppy in a small bungalow with a back garden and nearby pet supplies shop.

The breeds available are Chihuahua, Labrador, Mutt (aka mongrel or mixed breed), Pug and Whippet. There’s also a special robot dog you can unlock if you progress far enough.

The game begins in a very promising fashion with options screens that let you customise the owner and their dog. You don’t control the dog directly, but you can call it to you, teach it tricks, play with it and take care of it.

In essence this is a small collection of mini-games:

- Ball & Frisbee Throwing: You throw a ball or frisbee for the dog to catch by clicking at just the right moment on a sliding scale. Click at the wrong moment and the dog doesn’t catch anything. Gameplay is identical for throwing balls or frisbees.

- Teaching Tricks: Basically a two or three step dance mat game without any music, use the direction pad to click in the directions shown on screen in order and the dog gets closer to learning a trick such as sitting or rolling, and then praise it afterwards. Do this often enough and the trick is learned, with the dog able to perform it when selected from a menu. There are 10 tricks to teach in all, but the gameplay is virtually identical for all of them.

- Dog Patting: Similar gameplay to teaching tricks, but there’s no actual trick at the end of it, just a happier dog.

- Dog Cleaning: Again, similar to teaching tricks but all you get is a cleaner dog.

- Discipline: If your dog does something naughty such as scratching the carpet, a timer appears on the screen and you have to click the direction pad button before it runs out. This makes the owner talk in a stern voice, and eventually the dog learns not to do whatever it did.

- House Training: The same gameplay as discipline, but involving the dog peeing or pooing while indoors. Eventually the dog learns not to do this and is house trained so it only does its business outside. Remember to clean up after the dog by clicking on the pee or poo.

When you combine the duplicates, it means there are actually only three minigames, none of which vary or demand any skill, and they don’t get more difficult or interesting over time either.

In theory simulation games like The Sims are meant to sidestep conventional gameplay by offering a customisable world which you can shape to your liking, but Sims 2: Pets for N-Gage doesn’t do this. You can’t customise the owner or their flat at all, and you can’t buy the dog anything except a bed, ball and frisbee (and even those are from a very limited selection).

Another comparison one might make is with Nintendogs, where the sheer joy of seeing the puppies playing together can be enough in itself, but that isn’t the case with Sims 2: Pets because there’s only one puppy per game. There is no interaction between dogs. Sims 2: Pets also has a far more limited range of locations with just the living room, kitchen and garden.

A third comparison might be with Tamagotchi, where the pleasure comes from simply taking care of a creature and watching it develop, but that doesn’t really happen in Sims 2: Pets as the puppy never changes and it doesn’t seem to require much taking care of either. This reviewer’s puppy ate once a week according to the in-game timescale, and there was never any pressure to balance one need against another.

Sims 2: Pets doesn’t have bad gameplay, its problem is that the gameplay is missing. It’s not an arcade game, it’s not a “sandpit” game, it’s not a collect-em-up game, it doesn’t pass muster as a puppy simulator, and it’s not really a proper virtual pet game either.

There is incidentally also a human career aspect but it’s so minor that it’s barely worth mentioning. You get a wage every day which you can use to buy toys, food, shampoo or beds for the dog, and if you get promoted the wage goes up. Promotion seems to happen automatically as long as you keep taking care of the dog, and very soon you reach the top of the career tree so money ceases to be a problem.

There’s also a list of “goals” which earn you bonus cash, but that too isn’t really worth talking about. It’s an ever-changing list of four things you would do anyway like patting the dog, throwing it a ball, giving it a bath etc, you don’t really need to even look at it to earn these bonuses. Even the bonuses themselves become insignificant once you’ve been promoted to very high salary levels.

Graphics & Sound

The graphics in Sims 2: Pets are generally very good, with nice bright colours, and smooth fast 3D. Most importantly of all, there is adorably realistic animation for the puppies. The locations are also nicely designed, especially flourishes like the Japanese objects in the kitchen, though it would have been even nicer if there were more locations. Some textures do look pixellated but the smoothness of the 3D makes up for this.

The interface works well too, with a single menu and a series of objects in each room that let you choose an activity. Although this sounds awkward, the camera moves so quickly and smoothly, with an automatic selection system, that it actually feels very intuitive.

There are also some very nice graphical touches too, such as the slow motion catch the dog makes of frisbees, and the way you can see what your dog is dreaming about, which will be familiar to anyone whose real life dog has growled or “run” while asleep in the corner.

The sound is very good, with nice effects, music clips and speech. The speech is the usual Sims gibberish, which you’ll either love or hate. However, although the speech is good, the range of phrases in the game is far too small and gets annoying very quickly. As it’s gibberish anyway it might have made sense to chop it up into groups of syllables, and let the game assemble them into words at random, allowing for a much larger variety of phrases.

All the breeds in the game, including the unlockable robot. Incidentally, pugs don’t look anything like this…

N-Gage Arena

There’s no multiplayer of any kind, though there is a league table of high scores. However, as points are laughably easy and very boring to obtain, all that the table tells you is how long certain people have been able to put up with Sims 2: Pets.

A word about N-Gage Point Pickups in Sims 2: Pets is also in order. This reviewer played for about 3 or 4 hours in total, by the end of which they managed to collect 980 out of 1000 possible NGPs mostly without even trying (and the remaining 20 were apparently unobtainable due to a bug). This is ludicrous, no other N-Gage game lets you get all of its points so easily and so quickly. It devalues the entire concept of point pickups.

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.

The graphics suffer greatly when viewed on a television screen, they’re still just as fast and smooth but the 3D object textures are incredibly pixellated and look quite nasty. The sound is good through the TV speakers though.

Bluetooth keyboard controls generally work on Sims 2: Pets, though there’s a slight delay between pressing the keyboard’s selection button and the game acknowledging the command. This makes it difficult to hit the mark when throwing a ball or frisbee, though other gameplay aspects aren’t affected that much.

Overall

Sims 2: Pets has a good graphics engine and an easy-to-use interface. It’s made even more easy to use by on-screen hints that appear when you first encounter a new aspect of the game, so practically everyone should be able to play this straight away.

Unfortunately the developers have neglected to provide an actual game, either conventional or unconventional. There’s absolutely no enticement to continue playing, this game doesn’t feel as though it’s been properly playtested.

The tasks you have to do are far too simple and boring, they don’t develop at all, it’s simply a question of how often you want to repeat them. Even if you do go through the tasks, the game can be 100% finished in just a few hours.

That wouldn’t matter if it worked as a fun virtual toy or an intricate dolls house, but it’s neither of these things: there’s nothing to customise, only two or three items you can buy, and nothing ever changes. The only major unlockable is a mechanical dog which behaves just like the normal dogs.

There are too few breeds, just five (or six if you include the robot dog). It would have been nice to see more available, perhaps as unlockables or even as downloadable content. Dog sim fans enjoy a good choice of breeds just like football sim fans enjoy a good choice of clubs.

Worst of all though you never really feel any kind of attachment to your virtual pet. It doesn’t have any kind of individuality or personality, and it doesn’t grow or change either so there’s no feeling of achievement. The dog won’t even try to collect balls or frisbees which you’ve mis-thrown, and the mini-games in general don’t involve any proper team work. The animation of the dog is good but it doesn’t vary enough to suggest a creature with a personality.

The score we’ve given this game reflects its value as a full price title. However, if you want to rent it with a day pass or week pass you may well get a lot more value from it, as the entire game can be played in just a few hours.

If anyone from EA is reading this with future sequels in mind: keep the graphics engine and interface the same, but put some meat on those gameplay bones.

Play the full game below: