This year, over 90 experts judged over 650 nominations for the Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine Best Software Awards 2006. Our judges had plenty to say about their favorite products. In this issue we are publishing their comments about the programs nominated for the Games and Entertainment software categories. We will publish their comments on other software categories in future issues.
The purpose of publishing the comments is to give insights into a variety of products—not to show how the judges voted. For the sake of brevity, we've included only 1-3 comments per product and edited them for clarity and conciseness. A listing of the 2006 winners and finalists can be found on our Web site (http://pocketpcmag.com/awards/main.asp).
Pocket PC Games
Action Games
I was looking for games that are easy to control, have good game play, are easy to learn, and have good sound and graphics. Because of the small screen and small controls, there has to be a good balance between the speed of the game action and your ability to react. (Russ Terrell)
Anthelion 2: Celestial Vigilance
http://pdamill.com
Anthelion 2 is the sequel to one of the best space games ever! The PDAmill 3D engine is still the best in the market, which makes Anthelion 2 an awesome game with great usability! (Alex Januschewsky) A fantastic shoot em up! It has great graphics but poor music. Easier control of the ship and intuitive use of the stylus could help. (Chris Brunskill)
Anthelion 2 is space shooter game with high-end graphics
Enslave
http://pocketmoregames.com
Enslave had very impressive graphics and cool action. (Vesselin Nedeff) I found the game confusing to learn. (Russ Terrell) Enslave is a fun game—a great arcade shooter with good graphics. It features space travel and good missions—well done! (Alex Januschewsky)
Gold Miner Joe
http://viex.org
This was a great "Mario" style game. The controls were very responsive, but they need to improve the "save game" feature. (Russ Terrell)
Gold Miner Joe is a fun side-scroller game
TapzMania
http://ru-zero.com
A really fun concept and very well-executed. Good graphics and appropriate sound effects make this a fun game. (Jen Edwards) Astonishingly good—nice music and multiplayer feature. The game needs more stability, especially in multiplayer, and it needs more maps. (Werner Ruotsalainen)
Adventure Games
These games were great on the whole! The main problem with them (especially those by Tetraedge) was that the documentation tended to be inadequate for getting started. In other words, it did a fine job of explaining the user interface and basic commands, but didn't give a good enough sense of how to really start playing the game as far as the actual plot was concerned. (Ben Stanley) An incredibly difficult category to judge as so many of the games had amazing play and outstanding graphics. (Tari Akpodiete)
Atlantis Redux
http://atlantisredux.com
Atlantis Redux is a very innovative product with great graphics. The puzzles are quite easy to solve if you're an experienced adventure player. (Alex Januschewsky) The sound and movement of the character's mouths is sometimes out of sync. (Ben Stanley)
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