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N-Gage Coverage From Autumn 2004 Update
Gamemethod writes "Earlier this week the crew from Gamemethod went up to Canada to check out what's going on with the Nokia N-Gage. They also have a review of Bomberman, One and Rifts:
Promise of Power".
Im sure it hasnt reached that number yet
I have 12 tickets now, is that enough?
Im sorry Ngage, you need 15 tickets to live
*Pulls lever, Ngage falls through hole in floor*
I was, at first, but nothing I've heard has convinced me they've fixed what I thought was wrong with the original.
The framerates are still horrible, and possibly even worse now than before on everything, including the lowest-end 2D tetris-like games, the menu system is laid out like something I piled into a QBASIC program I cobbled up in middle school, and not a single game takes advantage of the vertical screen, and indeed they all seem to emphasize why the vertical screen is a hinderance because most of the action is along the horizontal axis. Frankly, it's still too expensive. If its flaws were as trivial as the GBA SP (i.e. no headphone jack), I would gladly pay $200, but they're not.
My first sitting at Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis, I made it through to the last boss. I've managed to get very far in every 2D Sonic game out-of-the-box, but when I played it on the N-Gage, I died eight times on the first level because the screen just isn't wide enough to react, and the frame rate isn't reliable enough to go all out if it was. The keys didn't respond as fast as I needed them too, either. The gummy, unresponsive keys aren't too bad on a cell phone, but once you put games in the equation, you better add fast responding controls.
The control pad is the only problem I haven't heard much about. Only one of the sources I've read mentioned it, and it said it was a very slight improvement from a very bad starting point.
All this is one thing, then we have the advertisements, which range from stupid or patronizing to outright insulting to the people they're supposedly targeting, and the company which either isn't taking this thing seriously, or expects the world to change its concept of gameing to fit their concept of a system.
Still waiting for the PSP. If anything will get my GBA moved from my pocket to my desk, that'll be it, but I'm not clearing a spot on my desk yet.