Tom and Jerry. Norman Wisdom and Jerry Desmond. Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier. Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer and Electronic Art’s FIFA series. Yes the world is awash with competitors, and that’s what makes it interesting. So how does Konami's football game measure up in its first season on Symbian? Let's kick off and find out.
Sometimes you want a game with depth, complexity and a story that will last for hours (in which case head over to David’s review of Crusade of Destiny). Other times you just need a quick blast of reflex testing, putting aside any idea of a over-arching plot, acres of help files and a dedicated corner of the brain reserved to remembering all the commands. Tez Ball is the latter.
In the great explosion of Tetris clones in the mid-eighties, many companies sought to tweak the format very slightly to have a game that was a bit like Tetris, but couldn’t be called the same if it ever came to court. One of the more popular alternative formats that’s still programmed by developers is the “spinning block of four colours/try and match three colours in a row” format.
While not a stand-out genre in the mobile world, the addition of accelerometers into mobile handsets has brought about the frustrating return of the marble rolling game. If you can recall the little puzzles of your childhood where you rolled a marble around a maze to get to an exit – then this is exactly the same - with even some pseudo 3D thrown in. Just don’t throw your phone against the nearest wall in frustration!
Action Bowling has an impressive list of bullet points, including “Bowling alley, bowling ball and pins built according to PBA regulation specifications”, so before you even download the title, it’s setting the standard quite high. Luckily, Action Bowling (ten-pin, not lawn or carpet bowling) does just enough to clear it. Scrappily, but it does manage it.
Following on from my mental note that “Uno is a bit like Mau Mau” in my review of the Gameloft HD game, here comes Lonely Cat Games with Mau Mau for Symbian! The gameplay is similar (by design) but does Mau Mau have a trump card to help it stand out against the colourful competitor? [editor's note: this was one of my favourite S60 games back in the day - give it a chance!]
I don’t know, you wait all that time for a Petanque game, and then two come along in the space of six months. If you’ve moved up from the 5th Edition handsets and you enjoyed Big Roll in Paradise and found that it’s not available on Symbian^3, then perhaps Woody Games’ Petanque Boule Fighters will sate your desire for throwing balls around your touch screen.
Gameloft continue with an impressive run of mobile games, and our commenters can continue their impressive run by pointing out that, just like most games from the console developers, it’s been available on other platforms before. I’ll trump them on that, because Settlers has had a long life on the desktop before Gameloft bought its current incarnation to any of the smartphone platforms. But was it a good decision to bring it to Symbian?
Crusade of Destiny is the first 3D role playing game (RPG) available for Symbian^3. It’s based in a Swords and Sorcery fantasy world, much like the highly renowned World of Warcraft Massively Multiplayer Online RPG (MMORPG). Such games can be deceptively complex, requiring complex user interfaces (UI). Read on to find out how well this type of game translates into use on a touch screen mobile phone.
Now this I like. It’s a huge number of little jigsaws, all gathered under just one application. And rather than use actual jigsaw pieces (which to be honest could look a bit twee) you get nothing more than pieces made up of smaller squares (think the leftover pieces of a game of Tetris) and a shape to fit them into. Here's my All About Symbian and Ovi Gaming review...
