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Mobile phone games
Einhander
__BANNED USERS regular
__BANNED USERS regular
Ok, I've got a PSP but I don't like to haul it around everywhere, so I will on occasion find myself on the bus or whatever with some time to kill, but no books or tits in the area to look at. What I do have on me at all times, however, is my cell phone.
So, let's talk a bit about cell phone games.
I've got a SLVR, which is decent but I'm on Cricket, which means as far as I know I can only use games that I've downloaded through their bullshit Cricket Clicks bullshit. This means I miss out on cool shit like Metal Gear and Final Fantasy and basically any game that doesn't hit their service. The good news is, right after I signed up for it, some glitch made it possible for me to download like $20 worth of games without paying for them. Because of this, I ended up getting all of the following for like $10:
Megaman
Asphalt 2
Doom RPG
Mission Impossible 3
Resident Evil -The Missions
ChessMaster
King Kong
Might and Magic
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
This was around six months ago, and I haven't really bought anything since. Doom RPG has since expired, which is not only bullshit but is also the reason I haven't bought Orcs and Elves. I knew when I paid $5 for Doom that it would expire in three months, but I wanted to play it anyway since I'm a big Doom fan. It was, and now I really want to play it, but don't really think I should have to buy it again. Cell phone games that expire are the biggest bullshit ever. Amusingly enough, besides Doom RPG and Orcs and Elves, the only cell phone games on the Clicks service that expire are all made by EA (The Sims, Burnout, Nascar '07, NFS Carbon/ProStreet, Madden, etc).
Is there anyplace other than GameSpot Mobile that does cell phone game reviews and provides screenshots? Gamespot's website is bloated as fuck, and I don't trust their reviewing. Not only that, but they don't even list their fucking reviews in alphabetical order, so I have to scroll through their fucking reviews list at warp slow because their horrendous overblown ads are choking my fucking browser.
So yeah, let's talk about mobile phone games. What is good, what is shit, where is the best place to get them, stuff like that. This way we will know what to buy for the next time we're stuck in a bus or waiting for a meeting to start and all we have is our phone.
So, let's talk a bit about cell phone games.
I've got a SLVR, which is decent but I'm on Cricket, which means as far as I know I can only use games that I've downloaded through their bullshit Cricket Clicks bullshit. This means I miss out on cool shit like Metal Gear and Final Fantasy and basically any game that doesn't hit their service. The good news is, right after I signed up for it, some glitch made it possible for me to download like $20 worth of games without paying for them. Because of this, I ended up getting all of the following for like $10:
Megaman
Asphalt 2
Doom RPG
Mission Impossible 3
Resident Evil -The Missions
ChessMaster
King Kong
Might and Magic
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
This was around six months ago, and I haven't really bought anything since. Doom RPG has since expired, which is not only bullshit but is also the reason I haven't bought Orcs and Elves. I knew when I paid $5 for Doom that it would expire in three months, but I wanted to play it anyway since I'm a big Doom fan. It was, and now I really want to play it, but don't really think I should have to buy it again. Cell phone games that expire are the biggest bullshit ever. Amusingly enough, besides Doom RPG and Orcs and Elves, the only cell phone games on the Clicks service that expire are all made by EA (The Sims, Burnout, Nascar '07, NFS Carbon/ProStreet, Madden, etc).
Is there anyplace other than GameSpot Mobile that does cell phone game reviews and provides screenshots? Gamespot's website is bloated as fuck, and I don't trust their reviewing. Not only that, but they don't even list their fucking reviews in alphabetical order, so I have to scroll through their fucking reviews list at warp slow because their horrendous overblown ads are choking my fucking browser.
So yeah, let's talk about mobile phone games. What is good, what is shit, where is the best place to get them, stuff like that. This way we will know what to buy for the next time we're stuck in a bus or waiting for a meeting to start and all we have is our phone.
Einhander on
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Posts
Didn't actually look at the games, since I lack a cell phone. But it's game rankings, so it's good.
Anywho, I'll talk about what I know:
Have you tried out Mega Man II and Resident Evil Genesis?
Mega Man II is a pretty good port of the old NES classic. While it's not entirely a carbon copy of the original, it's still a lengthy romp-through. It's easier than the NES version, but there's a hard mode option.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG5Vw91OBCs&feature=related
Gameplay vid here. Have the audio up for the music, but ignore the dumbass commentator. He's really wrong about a lot of things.
Resident Evil Genesis is a great adaptation of REmake. Tank controls for movement, and quite a bit of adventuring, searching, and puzzle solving. But the view and combat is like this:
That's the main problem with cell phone games, so many of them aren't built for the phone's control scheme in mind. This is why stuff like Doom RPG and other turn based games are awesome, because then it doesn't really matter.
I plan on buying Resident Evil: Genesis, but it's $4.99 and I don't have any money in my "Flex Bucket" right now so I have to wait until I go down to one of their storefronts and give them some more money.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
Otherwise I can give you some recommendations:
Ancient Empires and Ancient Empires 2 are awesome. Basically Advance wars with medievil units. Brilliant. So well presented as well.
Might and Magic was good if I recall.
All the splinter cell games (except extended ops for some reason) are really good fun sort of puzzle games. Sort of a cross between prince of persia and impossible mission.
lumines, zoo keeper, tetris all work very well on handheld.
Doom rpg is great, orcs and elves less so as it is not doom and I don't think you can use a DOG as a weapon.
cannon fodder and sensible soccer might be worth a look, but their controls are terrible.
the sonic part 1 and part 2 games are a pretty faithful version of genesis/mega drive sonic 1 without the special stages and so are definately worth your time.
Theres a lot more but i gotta go.
Dunno if anyone other than Verizon has it, though.
It depends on your phone. If you're using an older or budget phone, you're still gonna be stuck with some packin breakout clone, but if you have a decent to high end phone you're looking at anything from 3D racing games to Tomb Raider to Quake.
Even if you've got a phone that fits in more with the median (like mine), there are still plenty of decent games that you can pick up. I'm working my way through Mega Man, which I thought would be impossible without a d-pad, but I'm doing ok. Asphalt is pretty fun, Splinter Cell is pretty good, Chessmaster is cool, and I can play against other people if I want. Doom RPG is really fun, and you ought to play it anyway if you're a doom fan. All of these games were designed with a phone in mind, so they work well if you've only got a few minutes to kill but can keep you occupied for quite a while if you've got a long wait ahead of you.
I'm actually half tempted to track down an N-Gage, since they're cheap as dirt and there were a couple of decent games on it, which are also cheap as dirt. I guess with the QD they even got rid of the side-talkin' thing also. I hear it's a decent phone, but I think it would be hard for me to get past the stigma of someone hearing my phone go off and then seeing me pull out an N-Gage.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
There are some phones that run games well, sure. Those games are designed for the mobile platform, though.
digital chocolate makes some great games. Mafia wars yakuza is supposed to be good, as is their tornado game.
but yeah, there are some good phones. None of them are motorolas. seriously, the razor and all of its relatives are crappy phones. they just look nice and market well. they're the bose of cellphones.
I'm thinking of checking around to see what my options are with some other companies, but the whole contract deal really throws me off.
Speaking of which, how is that handled when you buy a game on a normal provider? I can't move the games I have from my phone to a memory card, but is that different if you're on Sprint/Verizon/Etc?
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
We all bashed the N-Gage for the short time it was around... but even systems that sucked become somewhat hip to have once they've been dead and buried so long that it's hard to find one. If for nothing else than the "Yeah, I remember that... damn, where'd you get that thing?" moment.
I've never owned a "game capable" cell phone personally, but I have owned some old school PDAs... and if the phone is a Windows Mobile phone, I believe they can support much of the same software.
If that assumption is true (I'd imagine it is, or their whole "one mobile platform" chatterboxing is rubbish), you can find and download a bunch of free games (both LEGAL and free, just to note). For example, if you find Sudoku as addictive as I do, http://www.download.com/SuDoku-for-Pocket-PC/3000-2159_4-10410934.html this was entertaining.
However, YMMV. I know it works on PDAs, and I'd assume that would translate to cell phones that use the same "windows mobile" Operating System, but I can't guarantee it since I've never owned such a phone.
I get obscure gamer cred every so often when I bust out the Neo Geo Pocket Color, but unlike the N-Gage, the NGPC was highly regarded, so who knows.
I think the next phone I buy might end up being some fairly fancy-assed smartphone, once you get ahold of something running Windows Mobile, your game options explode. Not only that, but SCUMM VM runs on Windows Mobile as well.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
damn you, you almost made me came with that screenshot of shadowrun in the cell phone games thread.
It was worth it. Actually really liked it. Got a load of games for it for both cheap and free cos it's about as popular as hitler. Let me sum up:
Tony hawks pro skater 1/2 is a really good version if it weren't for one teeny tiny problem. You can't HOLD A BUTTON DOWN so grinding becomes an exercise in split second timing.
Tomb raider I never liked so can't comment.
Asphault urban GT is ok, though really really easy.
Civilization stole my life. AGAIN. pretty decent version based off civ 2.
The warhammer game is dodgy, but good enough to play if you like WH, which I used to.
King of fighters is about as good as the gba one, but with the buttons in the right place.
Worms world party is chuffing superb. Absolutely great rendition of the game.
Both the pathway to glory games are very good, sort of x-commy kind of deals. Quite neat. I don't really like WW2 games, so I couldn't get into them. I just don't think you can really have a good plot in WW2 games.
Add into that the large amount of homebrew available for symbian (including some ace .sis games and things like SCUMMVM) and it was a great little extra handheld.
Occasionally it would do something mental though on the phone side of things. I caught it calling someone i hadn't talked to in ages. The key pad was locked. HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU PHONING?!?!?
Oh and that rubber smash guard thing round the outside of it starts to peel off, so peel the whole thing off as soon as it starts doing it. save yourself the months of annoyance I had.
As for 'obscure gaming chique' (or however you spell it) it's totally on. I went to future publishing, you know, EDGE, OPS2 etc, for a job interview and everyone there was like "OMG an n-gage lol" and then i was like "check it out, monkey island" and they were all like "NO WAI!"
Yes, even the two guys who interviewed me were like "WTF! AWESOME!"
N-gage has street cred now. Like, 5 years after it needed it.
Stupid people on the train
*Shakes fist*
Whilst I am at it, some kids were watching The Simpsons Movie on a portable DVD player on the train the other day, and not only was the volume crazy loud/bad, they had it on the wrong aspect ratio. It was a 16:9 player, 16:9 video, and they had it squashed vertically and borders at the top and bottom. I literally wanted to hurt them.
Although the other day I was waiting for a bus and I heard a little girl playing Sonic the Hedgehog on a Sidekick. I looked at her parents and said "Hey, that's Sonic the Hedgehog, huh?" and her mom was like "Yeah, how'd you know?" and I just tapped my ear.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral