Tzer2 has ripped into Gameloft's Asphalt 4 for N-Gage (on S60) over on our sister site All About NGage, criticising its lack of innovation and jerky frame rates. The title is even described as feeling "dangerously close to shovelware", with the developers being "lazy". Despite the above, there's plenty in Asphalt 4 for getting an instant arcade racing gaming fix and doubtless the title will sell as well as its predecessor.
Read on in the full article.
funny how Gameloft is making amazing games for Iphone/Ipod touch platform, and this kind of crap to ngage
Finally someone says how bad Gameloft games actually are. But why does Asphalt 4 get 68%? 25% Would be realistic, and there are a couple of reasons: apart from the multiplayer mode there is nothing new at all. Although there are new cars and tracks, it's a shame to label them as new, as the driving physics are all the same for every car and the graphics are so bad that the cars and tracks are extremely pixelated. In addition, the seemingly different playing modes are, when played, barely different; you are drifting to get a nitro boost and you are crashing others to get either money (normal race) or to win the race (destruction race). Even the six tracks or many vehicles do not change the experience for these race modes.
And lastly, what about the utter boredom of the game, which is mainly caused by the linear gameplay? You cannot even drift as long as you're not in a curve!
A ripoff of a poor game (Asphalt 3) for 8� does not deserve more than 25%, otherwise ONE for N-Gage should get at least 130%. You see, I think you should set the bar according to existing titles on the platform and leave room for extraordinary titles. 68% means, that future games can be only a third better than asphalt 3, whereas there will surely be racing titles such as need for speed which hopefully will raise the bar. Gameloft are resting on their image as one of the biggest and most successful mobile games developers and since they earn enough money they don't have to take care of the quality anymore. It's not that I'm a games geek, otherwise I'd buy me a PSP for sure, it's just that I can't stand lazy companies gaining a lot of money for intolerable products and it is unfair towards other excellent developers such as infinite dreams, ideaworks3d or digital legends that Gameloft realises the biggest profit on the n-gage platform and thus pushes the other developers aside.
I'm not looking forward at all to next Gameloft titles such as Real Football or Prince of Persia, as they will barely differ from the already available sis versions.
Oh yes yes please Nokia can we have Glimmeratti back !
That was a fantastic game - should have sold bucketloads.
emerher wrote:Finally someone says how bad Gameloft games actually are.
68% means, that future games can be only a third better than asphalt 3, whereas there will surely be racing titles such as need for speed which hopefully will raise the bar. Gameloft are resting on their image as one of the biggest and most successful mobile games developers and since they earn enough money they don't have to take care of the quality anymore.
Emerher, Perfectly put :icon14:
Glad to know that I'm not the only one who thinks Gameloft is simply dishing out crap. I still have the good old Ngage QD version of Asphalt 2, a whopping 22mb game for the old 'Open' Symbian platform and still beats Asphalt 3 and 4 to the punch.
But I think its not only Gameloft or N-gage, there's some kind of internal politics at Nokia involved. Look at the original Tomb Raider for Ngage, the current symbian version of Tomb Raider Anniversary looks like a stripped down Java game in front of the original.
Unregistered wrote:funny how Gameloft is making amazing games for Iphone/Ipod touch platform, and this kind of crap to ngage
Believe me, they aren't really amazing, its just that you haven't played anything like it before.
But I think its not only Gameloft or N-gage, there's some kind of internal politics at Nokia involved. Look at the original Tomb Raider for Ngage, the current symbian version of Tomb Raider Anniversary looks like a stripped down Java game in front of the original.
Tomb Raider Anniversary for Symbian has got absolutely nothing to do with Nokia. It's a third party game.
The Asphalt games have got nothing to do with Nokia either, they're third party games too.
Third party means that a totally separate company develops, publishes and owns the game in its entireity, Nokia has got no control at all over the contents of a third party game.
Nokia make most S60 handsets, but Nokia have got nothing to do with most S60 software. Blaming Nokia for a bad Symbian game would be like blaming Microsoft for a poor Windows game or Apple for a poor Macintosh game.
Finally someone says how bad Gameloft games actually are. But why does Asphalt 4 get 68%? 25% Would be realistic,
If you read the full "overall" section of the review you'll see that there are good things about Asphalt 4, the whole smashing-things-up stuff can be quite fun.
The problem is that this is pretty much the same game as Asphalt 3, without any significant improvement (the Bluetooth multiplayer is there, but it isn't very good).
Gameloft have had a year to make their graphics engine less jerky, and other publishers on N-Gage have much smoother 3D graphics right from the start, so it definitely isn't a hardware problem. For example if you compare Gameloft's Dogz to EA's Sims 2 Pets on N-Gage, Sims 2 Pets has MUCH smoother and nicer 3D, even though Dogz came out after Sims 2 Pets. Why? Because EA bothered to use a good 3D engine, while Gameloft didn't bother.
Gameloft are resting on their image as one of the biggest and most successful mobile games developers and since they earn enough money they don't have to take care of the quality anymore.
Well, this is the problem, however bad games are, if they sell well then the publishers will make more of them.
Unless gamers stop buying derivative games, publishers will keep making them because it's easy money. Reviews don't really matter to games companies, it's sales that matter.
I'm really hope that Nokia will bring it back the King Of Fighters Extreme in N-Gage 2.0
Tzer2 wrote:Nokia make most S60 handsets, but Nokia have got nothing to do with most S60 software. Blaming Nokia for a bad Symbian game would be like blaming Microsoft for a poor Windows game or Apple for a poor Macintosh game.
But we can blame Nokia for keeping the standards for N-gage games so low, when it was launched developers were asked to ensure that the games should be able to run on all N-gage supported handsets and strangely the announced lineup also included the 220mhz processor based N73. Although the official N73 n-gage client never came out but it pulled the quality standards bar so down low. Look at the n-gage games available today there are rarely any games that match the standards of the original n-gage games. Some of the Nseries handsets have enough graphics might to challenge PS1 or PSP games, don't know why Nokia is letting it go waste?
But we can blame Nokia for keeping the standards for N-gage games so low, when it was launched developers were asked to ensure that the games should be able to run on all N-gage supported handsets and strangely the announced lineup also included the 220mhz processor based N73.
The graphics problems with Asphalt 4 are NOT because of the hardware.
As I said in the review, all other publishers on N-Gage have managed much smoother graphics on N-Gage than Gameloft. They're all running on the same hardware, but Gameloft's games look much more jerky, so the only explanation is that Gameloft's 3D engine stinks.
And the problems in Asphalt 4 go beyond the graphics, the problem is that they've cloned Asphalt 3 right down to the same point pickups and same unlockable game modes. If they'd tried to make things a bit new, a bit different, then at least you'd feel the sequel was worth doing. But they didn't really change anything except the tracks, so it feels like a rip-off. Even if the graphics had been perfect, it would still feel like a rip-off to see the same game being re-sold as a sequel.
Incidentally, regarding the reference hardware, that's not going to be forever, they do intend to move the hardware on as phones develop. For example the next SDK will have support for graphics hardware, and the N97 is (presumably) going to have touchscreen gaming, two things which are impossible on the N73. I think the N-Gage platform will gradually develop like PC gaming has, with no specific generations but hardware gradually becoming more powerful over the years.
Some of the Nseries handsets have enough graphics might to challenge PS1 or PSP games, don't know why Nokia is letting it go waste?
The N-Gage platform has good enough graphics for phone games, it's more or less the same as the Nintendo DS in the graphics department. Something like ONE or Creatures Of The Deep or Bounce or System Rush Evolution could easily be DS games.
The Nintendo DS has outsold the PSP several times over, despite the PSP being graphically far superior, so most gamers clearly want something else apart from the best graphics.
Tzer2, I don't think Nokia should be praised for any efforts they took on the n-gage revival. As for now the platform seems to be at an early beta stage and we geeks are the paying beta testers; the public or let's say the non-geeks have never heard of ngage till this day. If you look at the number of available games and the number of supported phones it just seems ridiculous to acknowledge the platform as a real gaming platform. The point is that when you say Nokia has nothing to do with the quality of the games you miss out the fact that they set the bar with the hardware and software that they provide the phones with and therefore they have to inform developers about specific minimum requirements of a game. Nokia seemingly have set these requirements very low, since companies like gameloft are allowed to resell their java games under the ngage label. Just let me show you what I mean: beside the asphalt series, there is also e.g. Fifa 08 and fifa 09 which both were firstly released as sis versions and afterwards they became ngage games without any significant changes to the sis versions (BTW, fifa 09 also seems to be a ripoff of fifa 08); or do you remember crash nitro kart 3d? The ngage version is so unchanged compared to the previously released sis version, that installing the ngage version is not possible when the sis version is already installed!
And this again, in connection with the fact that the market share of nseries phones (ngage compatible phones) is tiny compared to the series40 product line (ngage incompatible phones), shows that nokia will not bother raising the bar for ngage games. A new sdk doesn't necessarily mean the developers (especially gameloft) will actually use the benefits. Ngage is more of another marketplace for developers than a platform on its own.
Actually.. I believe Nokia tried to be greedy (as you do being a multinational company).. to try and extend the NGage umbrella to as many of their phones as possible.. including the N73.
Just remember that it is not really the N73 that is holding it back (since the client never officially came out for it).. but the NEWER hardware is just as bad. Look at the N81 or even the N96 (it even had CPU speed cut back.. without 3D Acceleration!).
Ngage is such a joke of an effort..
Games support? Well.. whats been out in the last couple of months??
hmmm...
i wonder if gameloft will continue to launch such games once FishLabs comes out with its games....GL's definitely gonaa get a run for its money