Mr. Poppinfresh's Review Roundup
posted by Mr. Poppinfresh at 8:30 PM on Sunday, November 28th, 2004
Here are some pre-Festivus reviews from the Editor's Desk, sure to send you stampeding to empty your pockets at the nearest Electronics Repositorium.
Pocket Kingdom
We all know ganking people is fun; even the roasteth-piggeth eating roleplayers among us secretly yearn to run off and e-bolt some asshole at his RP wedding. Pocket Kingdom, the NGage-based cellphone MMO that is to be the debut Ngage Arena title, is the first MMO game yet to tap directly into these basic pixelcidal urges in a more or less unapologetic manner.
First off, the game's concept is clever, and for once in the history of MMO games we are presented with a case where discussing the backstory of the game world will not result in terminal brain cancer among the subjected. 'Ulgress', the most famous griefer of his time, was banned from his favorite online game for 'sploiting; Pocket Kingdom players are vying for control of his assets by creating little armies and raiding one another's fortresses. All the various classes of unit have their unique form of sterotypical MMO behavior; amazons want to sit around and craft things all day rather than fight, demons are hardcore roleplayers who speak of 'smiting thou', and the humans talk like your generic MMO PK trash. It feels a lot like Turing tests of early UO.
Units are promoted and equipped using 'emblems' and items created from joined components found during the course of the game. Once armies are equipped, the actual mechanics of combat are simple: you send a party of up to four troops into enemy strongholds or NPC forts, and the combat automatically occurs based on pre-assigned numerical values. The combat can be funny to watch at first, but is a little hollow in the end due to the lack of interactivity. If you merely want a quick, amusing diversionary game to play, it's probably more than sufficient to keep you occupied for a while, but don't count on treating it like a full-on modern MMO game.
As a cellphone game, it definitely gets 5/5. If I actually reviewed it as a competitor to WoW, though, it wouldn't rank nearly as well.
Altec-Lansing GT-5051 Speakers
What can I say? Sometimes, reviewing this stuff pays off more than others. This is definitely one of the 'good' times.
One of the big problems with going to college now, aside from dividing my time between the equally-important categories of Alcohol and Loose Women (homework? whassat?), is that I live in a tiny cube unfit for normal human habitation. Something as fancy as 5.1 surround sound speakers simply isn't practical when I practically have to shove my knees into my nose in order to fit in next to my computer desk.
Until now. Mmmmm.
Altec-Lansing's little GT-5051 speaker set delivers all the love of true surround sound without those pesky rear speakers clogging up your liquor drawer. They call it "Side-Firing Dipole Sound", which is a fancy way of saying "the front speakers bounce sound behind you and do the rear sound too". I call it an effective way to scare the shit out of myself playing Half-Life 2 in the dark of my little cave.
I honestly have no complaints with these speakers. They look great, sound great, have easy to use controls prominently placed on the right speaker, and most importantly fit in my fucking room. They are easily the best speakers I have ever used with my computer, handily beating my seven-speaker surround-sound setup that proceeded them.
If you need new computer speakers, buy these. You will not be sorry.
NGage QD
No more ear taco. I'm terribly sorry.
After the biggest grassroots mockery campaign in the history of consumer electronics, Nokia decided that re-engineering the Ngage might not be the worst idea ever. Given that Nintendo made the original Gameboy Advance without backlighting and with only two front buttons, I'm willing to keep an open mind on said redesign and not hold it against them. The QD is actually a pretty good stab at making a workable game console fit into a phone.
The ugly side-talking is gone, as is the need to remove the battery to change games. Now, there is a handy little game slot covered up by a rubber flap at the bottom of the unit. In terms of general quality, the QD is an excellent device. The screen is bright and easy to navigate with the buttons, the battery life is excellent (I've left mine idling for several days and still been able to play Pocket Kingdom for six hours before recharging), and the Bluetooth is a very nice business tool. The buttons are easy to use, both for gaming and for telephone use. NGage Arena promises to be a potential 'killer app' for the platform, offering NGage owners a notable advantage over their Nintendo-wielding scorners: playing Pathway to Glory online with your buddies certainly sounds less lame than chopping vegetables with a stylus. I've been interested in the trend towards mobility in online gaming for a while now, and the QD seems like a solid step towards that end, assuming the titles are there to back up what appears to be well-executed hardware.
Feature-wise, the phone is worth the price, assuming the particular mix of features the QD carries are what you're looking for. I give it a tentative 'buy' rating, assuming the game library follows through.
Discuss being a consumer whore in our forums.
|
