Month: May 2007

NAME: Johnny Crash
COMPANY: Sumea
PLATFORM: JAVA
GENRE: Action
SIZE: 133 KB
TEST PHONE: LG U8630
RATING: 9/10

Johnny Crash by Sumea – The premise of this game is you controlling a stunt man which has to perform various mid-air tricks.
You as Johnny gets shot out of a cannon and see how far you can fly before crash landing. You have to help him gain fame by also meeting various tasks.

What makes me recommend this game is that its one of a few that only requires the use of 1 button. Yep its a one button game ! Fantastic I’m sure many people are saying.

There’s 2 modes. The career mode and the high score mode. Career mode see you and Johnny attempt to gain fame by doing mid air tricks to impress an audience. High score sees you attempt to ‘fly’ the longest distance.

Game play: Johnny gets shot out a cannon that moves up and down.
There are different optimal angles which you have to shoot from. The cannon moves automatically so timing is essential. Whilst mid air you pres the button to make him flap his arms to adjust forward angle, up or down.
There is only a limited ‘strength’ so you can’t flap his arms all the time.

There are various tasks which involve getting hit by lightening to speed up and kites to help him fly higher.
There are also alien space ships to hit and helicopters and flocks of birds to run into. Fun and ridiculous at the same time.

There other hilarious part is the landing.
Some tasks involve crash landing into signs or shopping trolleys. Landing on the ground is just a funny too ! BTW you get points for how ‘spectacular your landing is.

It is not a difficult game to master, learning the best time to flap and timing the landing. Learning the controls is really easy with only one button to press. Perfect for a mobile phone.

There’s 12 levels titled:
Flying school
Electricity
Birds
Barrels
Kite gulide
Cloud encounter
Heli-hair-cut
Coffee and Donut
High profile Conference
Lost in Supermarket
Goldrush

Graphics are good with little action movements that are appropriate. IT may seem minimal at first but lets face it the sky isn’t filled with crap in real life.

Sound is standard midi is appropriate but not varied.

The save function doesn’t seem to work on the 8630 which is why we haven’t given it a perfect score.

That said this is a Sumea product so its difficult to tell if there is a save function at all.

I believe a new version is out – Johnny Crash Does Texas.

Summary

Johnny Crash is an entertaining game. It is simple yet difficult to master. You can pick it and play over and over. In fact I’m now refining my flying technique to beat the high scores.

I reckon its fairly close to the perfect mobile phone game. A must have game.

NAME: Fantastic 4
COMPANY: (M)Forma
PLATFORM: JAVA
GENRE: Movie/TV based Platformer
SIZE: 218 KB
TEST PHONE: LG U8630
RATING: 3/10

The premise: You play as various members of the F4 team sent to complete various tasks in order to catch up with Dr Doom.

The gamplay involve solving various puzzles and ‘clobbering’ various enemies using the various powers of each member of the F4. This is all very standard stuff in these types of games – nothing new here.

Graphics are poor and sound is minimal throughout the game. I felt like I stepped back in time to the old days of the Commodore 64 or Sinclair computers.

Besides the graphics the other problem is the controls and collision detection issues. It’s all imprecise and just plain odd. It was annoying to the point that we didn’t finish the game.

Summary

We rate this game a 3/10.

We gave this game a low score because there is nothing really desirable about it. Some older fans may enjoy the old style look and feel but the majority won’t. If you persist you may be able to complete the game but it could have been so much better.

NAME: Dragon Island
COMPANY: Macrospace
PLATFORM: JAVA
GENRE: Forward scrolling shooter
SIZE: 120 KB
TEST PHONE: LG U8630
RATING: 7/10
You play as the hero Theobald Blade sent out by King Chaung the Wise of the Green Islands to sort out the awakening of Dragon Island. Unfortunately nothing is said or hinted about what why the ‘Awakening of Dragon Island’ is such a bad thing ! I guess it because it’s a secret.

The game is like countless other platfomers with various challenging levels, fruit to collect and monsters to subdue. It does depart from other platformers apart from having a weapon from the start. Yep you have your trusty never ending supply of axes to hurl at snails, fishes and so forth. Powerups include armour bonuses.

Graphics are modern and are large enough for a small screen and music like all mobile phone games is limited.

The controls are assigned appropriately considering the number of moves you can make. Eg, jumping, climbing , axe throwing etc.. However there is some awkwardness when you have to rush movements. It even has a save function which helps as some of the levels are quite long.

Game play is generally pretty good. The level of difficulty has been implemented in a good fashion, it increases in a consistent fashion.

There’s also a time limit which each level has to be completed. This is appropriate because it can be a simple game to complete but difficult if you want to collect everything.

The save function works but you have to start at the beginning of the level. Not much of a problem.

It is playable in most environments without attracting too much attention.

Issues

The first thing you notice when the game started is that the volume is defaulted to FULLY LOUD. This is very annoying since its not exactly the most catchy theme song out there.

I do not have any Dragon Island cheats or hints.

Summary

We rate this game a 7/10.

Dragon Island on the whole is a pretty good game made for a mobile phone. If you’re into this sort of game genre it will satisfy. If you’re not its still worth getting for entertainment value.

I believe this sort of game would work well on a Nintendo Gameboy ! The basics are there but they would need to work out how to differentiate it from the other platformers …

I haven’t finished the game yet but probably will in the near future.

NAME: Cannons
COMPANY: Macrospace
PLATFORM: JAVA
GENRE: Cannon
SIZE: 66 KB
TEST PHONE: LG U8630
RATING: 1/10

The premise is that you control a canon and have to blast away your enemies.
The concept is not new and in this form it still doesn’t have that unique factor that will attract masses to it.

You essentially control the ‘power’ and angle of the cannon bearing in mind wind direction and strength. Controls are fine and easy to get used to.

They have added in a power up feature but it still doesn’t make it a great game.

Graphics are pretty poor compared to most. If it had better graphics and perhaps bigger graphics and more ‘special animations’ that set it apart from the rest.

There is a problem with the AI regarding the impact of wind and angle on your shot. All the other better features of the game can’t override this fundamental issue.

Summary

We rate this game a 1/10.

Cannons is just another ‘cannon’ game. It’s difficult to play because the AI is flawed and even with the flaw there’s still nothing else to recommend it.

NAME: Ancient Empires
COMPANY: Macrospace
PLATFORM: JAVA
GENRE: Stragety
SIZE: 126 KB
TEST PHONE: LG U8630
RATING: 9/10

Ancient Empires is mobile phone game by made by Macrospace. This is a real time strategy game for your mobile phone.

You play as King Galamar of the Kingdom of Thorin who has to thwart his twin brother, Valadorn who has suddenly turned evil.

This is a game that captures the essence of a real time strategy game. The fact that it plays so well on a mobile phone is a credit to the developer.

Those who play Warcraft (Blizzard) will find themselves at home with this game. You start off with the basic characters and have to build an army to defend your kingdom.

Believe it or not they have even incorporated a story line into the game not just a written foreword to set the mood. That said many games don’t have interesting prologues but this one makes a passing grade.

Back to the game, you have the choice of buying set pieces summarised as follows:

– Soldiers who can collect money and attack.
– Lizard warriors who can move great distances and have defensive bonus if in water.
– Wizards can raise skeletons for extra attack turns.
– Spiders have a special ability decrease defence to other units.
– Wisps that increase attack stats.
– Catapults do high damage but on from a distance.
– Golems that have high attacks and defence but slow movers.
– Archers who can attack from a distance but weak defence.
– Wyvern’s are the ultimate class which has high everything.

As an added feature all your character stats vary according to terrain. Some like mountains and villages give a defence bonus and others like forests give bonuses to certain characters.

There doesn’t appear to be too many levels to the game, 7 in all I think (which is fine cause it is only for a mobile phone) but the difficulty level jumps dramatically at level 4. Also the ability to save at any point is perfect.

On the musical side there a several tunes which is good. The graphics while don’t look state of the art they still look modern.

A minor issue with the game is that the enemy also gets the same type of units. It would would have been nice to at least change the names and graphic of the units.

The main issues I have with Ancient Empires is the slow accumulation of funds and the sudden step up in difficulty on the middle levels.

Summary

We rate this game a 9/10.

Ancient Empires as a real time strategy game for a mobile phone they have done a pretty good job! The game play is good, controls easy to master the action can be saved at any point.

I reckon its the benchmark real time strategy game for mobile devices. I find it hard to imagine a game like this on a phone could be so good.

Must have game to pass the time anywhere you can imagine. Even if you not into these style of games give it a go – you might be convinced.

Close to perfect game on its genre for a phone.*See bottom of page.

COMPANY: AIKY & Square Enix
PLATFORM: JAVA
GENRE: Forward scrolling shooter
SIZE: 76 KB
TEST PHONE: LG U8630
RATING: 6/10

Aleste by is essentially a forward scrolling shooter game. There isn’t a background story given for the game – which is unusual.

The basic premise is that you control a flying craft or plane of some sort and shoot down as many alien and alien bosses as possible. There are a ton of things to shoot, avoid and of course to collect numerous powerups.

It’s reminiscent of past games like 1942 or Raiden of the last decade in look and feel. So its not the most original in concept and not implemented nearly as well as its predecessors.

Controls are easy to master since it has an auto-fire option. As you can guess pressing the fire button many time on a phone would be pretty annoying especially when there are so many things to shoot at.

Essentially you use the navi-key for forward and backwards and sideways. The center button or 0 can to used to turn auto fire on or off.

The game play is monotonous but perfectly adequate for an escape from the boredom of public transport.

The graphics are simple and reasonable but it does look old school compared to newer titles. Your space ship and enemies bar the bosses are too small.

There isn’t much sound to talk about only a relatively simple MIDI theme playing in the background.

OK soundtrack whilst playing but no fire of destruction sounds. It would be nice to hear your enemies being blown to bits. So based on this you definitely don’t need sound to play this game.

The levels in the game seem to go on forever and there is no discernible increase in difficulty. Even the bosses are easy to wipe out once you understand the games AI.

In fact Space Impact II on the Nokia phones is a better and more satisfying game.

Hints: Selecting the right powerup and subsequent compatible powerups are very important. That said it only takes one level to reach the max for a particular power so nothing to worry about.

Summary

We rate this game a 6/10.

Aleste is a perfect mindless shooter you can play on the train or anywhere else for that matter. However only if you truly have nothing better to do.

Buy only if you have small kids to keep entertained or the price is really low.