Review: One
Score:
83%
Version Reviewed: MMC
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I’m sorry, but the massive future of N-Gage game is a humble beat-em-up? Scarily enough, yes. One is Nokia’s latest N-Gage title, and it follows Pathway to Glory and Pocket Kingdom as a Nokia led title. It’s pushing the envelope in a huge number of directions.
The whole point of One is become the greatest fighter in the world. Now lots of games have this as their plot line, and you work through a story line before being crowned champion. Well, One may have a story line mode, that you progress through, but that’s not what crowns you champion of the world. To be the best, you’ll need to be the best player of One… in the world.
Princes Of The Universe
Yes it’s global conflict – every single owner of the One MMC Game is able to enter through the N-Gage Arena. You’ll be ranked as you progress through the story line, and as you fight single one-off fights. The reason this all works is in the scoring system of One. It’s called ELO, and it’s based on the ranking system used in Chess.
When you beat an opponent, you’ll be scored. That score will depend on how high your score is compared to your opponent. You’ll get much more if your opponent has a higher ELO score than you, and much less if you’re the more powerful. It’s roughly the same if you lose. With a low ELO taking on a high ELO, you won’t lose too many points. But if you get yourself whipped by someone hundreds of points below you, you’re going to take a massive deduction.
This is actually a really great idea – scores going up and down mean every fight can actually mean something – At the end of all this, log onto the Arena and post your fighter. If you’re top of the pile, with the highest ELO, then that’s it. You’re the One.
Play the Game
Okay, so high concept aside, how does One play? Not being a huge fan of fighting games, I approached the title with some trepidation. And that was silly of me, because the learning curve on One is pretty shallow. While you’ve got your direction pad, the main attack keys are simply punch and kick (5 and 7 respectively). Inside the box is the handy cheat sheet of moves, so a triple-tap on kick is going to pull out a spectacular motion captured high kick into my opponent’s chin. Nice.
Actually there are three other keys as well. These change how aggressive you are. From top to bottom on the keypad, 3,6 and 9, and these are for switching to offensive, neutral or defensive stances. These have a direct bearing on the strength of moves and the type of moves you can pull off, how well you can defend yourself and how much damage you take when hit.
Much like any other game in this genre there are a huge number of patterns (combos) that you can use to perform more and more spectacular moves. From simple rapid punches to the chin to triple spins and a final kick into someone’s stomach, Digital Legends (the team behind “One”) have kept the realism incredibly high. There’s no cartoon jumping twenty feet in the air, or magical fire bolts emerging from your wrists. The moves are based around Jeet-Kung-Do, so it all feels very natural and true to life… even though two knees into the small of someone’s back, followed by a roundhouse to their head really should leave them on the ground, and not up bouncing on their feet a few moments later.
There is a lot to remember in this game, because you are going to need to master these combo moves – you can’t get by just hammering on the punch key. The key to making progress is the story mode. Through this you’re led through opponents of greater and greater skill. As you progress through them, leaving a trail of unconscious bodies, an old, wizened Grand Master will encourage you to try out new techniques and strategies. This is actually an incredibly well balanced way to get people into the game. It makes it easily accessible for people who wouldn’t normally look at a fighting game, and provides a challenge once you reach your level of opponent, which seems to be about halfway through the second level for most people who’ve had a go at “One.”
It’s A Hard Life
There’s one blotch on One’s copybook, and that’s the absolutely crazy save game system. There pretty much isn’t one. Now this isn’t much of a problem when doing single fights against Arena loaded or Bluetooth multi-player matches, but progress through the story line is severely hampered. Matches are grouped together in stages, and you’re not told how many fights are in each stage. And when you reach the end of a stage, your progress is saved automatically. For a game that puts you in as much control as possible while playing, this seems a decidedly unorthodox method of saving. I’d have much preferred a system that saved your progress as you, err... progressed.
At least you can replay each match until you win, but don’t go exiting the game. The only real option is to put “One” into the background (sort of an extended pause) but you’ll need to remember not to do anything else that needs a lot of execution memory on your N-Gage. For example, if you go to do any web browsing, then Symbian OS is going to close down apps in the background to free up memory. If it does this to “One” then you’ll be back at the start of a stage the next time you play. It’s not enough to seriously disrupt “One,” but it is a concern.
One Vision
But then you look at the graphics of “One” and you can (almost) forget this one oversight. Because it looks amazing. It’s more in the realm of Virtua Fighter than any other beat 'em up, but in a much more realistic way. You’ve got free reign (within the wardrobe limitations) to clothe and accessorise your fighter. Full army gear, sports kit, gothic, spiky hair, shaved, there must be thousands of possible combinations. And of course this personalised look is also uploaded to the Arena.
The motion captured moves are smooth and fluid, and can look painfully realistic (no wonder, when you consider the designers went to the middle of Glasgow to find the best people to capture the essence of street fighting). Eagle eyed players are going to spot that the shadows match every move as well, no matter what direction the sunlight is coming from, A subtle touch that you don’t immediately pick up on, but illustrates the concentration on the game world that has been put into the game.
Menu screens are clear and well laid out, and there’s little confusion – you’ll be straight into combat in only a few seconds.
Breakthru
There’s no doubt that Nokia are incredibly proud of “One.” It pushes the N-Gage in terms of graphics, connectivity, scope and gives the gaming public a type of challenge that hasn’t really been seen before. Take away all the frills and novelty factors around the game and you still have an exceptional handheld beat-em-up game that can stand alongside the genre favourites. There’s enough here to educate the casual gamer, so unless you’re dead set against a fighting game, “One” is definitely recommended to pretty much every N-Gage owner.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at