Concentrix  ::   Lejjo  ::  Thought of the Week  ::  News

Concentrix redux

Since I told you about the Concentrix open beta long after it had expired, I feel it’s only fitting to review the final version (although you can still download the demo). Anyway, as you might remember, Concentrix is basically Tetris inside a giant circle, and you match pieces as they fall to the outer edge of the circle. Developer Scalene is referring to the game as a collection, but really it consists of eight variations of the same theme: Ringtrix, Radtrix, Cooltrix, Blocktrix, Tetrix, Dr. Trix, TriTrix, and RainTrix.

Since I've already mentioned the game before in this newsletter, I won't get into how each is different. Suffice it to say that there's a nice variety, with some being easy and others being more difficult. Before diving into any of them, I recommend reading the help screen that's available on the main menu where you select the game you'll play, as some of the variations can be a little hard to figure out. For the uninitiated, I'd say Tetrix is the most straightforward and enjoyable version of the game.

Concentrix is better than most games in its genre. The graphics are very polished, with good color balance and shading. The game also features good sound effects and music, something most tetris-type games lack. You also get a record feature, although I'm not sure how much fun it'll be to watch old Concentrix movies. The controls work very well, with no jerkiness or delays. Concentrix is a good effort that manages to deliver freshness in the puzzle game genre that’s rarely seen these days.

Lejjo my eggo

When I was a kid, I had a game where the goal was to maneuver a metal ball through a maze. The trick was that you couldn’t move the ball directly—you relied of gravity and inertia by turning knobs to tilt the maze along its four axes.

That’s kind of the idea behind Lejjo, with a few gimmicks thrown in. Lejjo is a gelatinous little square, and you play by rotating the screen to get it through 32 different mazes in the shortest time possible. Since the blob bounces and jiggles like a supercharged jello square, the physics in the game can get interesting: you have to worry about the square falling too hard and bouncing out of control.

My biggest concern when installing this game was that it was going to be unplayable because of frame rate issues, but this PocketFrog-based game was perfectly smooth on my iPaq 2215. Graphics are kept fairly simple, with basic textures and a bitmapped background image. The levels aren't just simple mazes, either—in some, you'll need to collect keys and deal with anti-gravity walls that can "push" your Lejjo out of control. I personally don't really care for the gimmicks (the anti-gravity walls just annoyed me), and I wish they had just made the levels tricky mazes. As it stands, some of the levels are too easy, while the gimmicky ones can be quite frustrating. When playing a game like this, I would rather just focus on simple physics and navigation.

Thought of the Week

As I was putting my regular column and the Top Ten article together (both of which are mostly assembled from TWiG issues), I noticed that I made several mistakes when listing the platform for each game. The listed platform was often "PPC2000" (meaning Pocket PC 2000) when the game actually required Pocket PC 2002 or even 2003. I usually include the platform information because it isn't always easy to find on the software distributor or even developer sites.

Back when I started doing the column for the magazine, listing platforms was really a pain since a lot of people still ran MIPS or even SH3 machines. Since I haven't gotten any complaints at all about having the incorrect platform listed, I'm wondering if people just don't care about support for older devices anymore.

Devices running 2002 and 2003 devices are nearly ubiquitous and will run all the newer software. I'm not going to conduct a survey or anything, but I'm wondering how many of you out there are still running the older units and if you plan on upgrading soon. Drop me a line and let me know what you think.

News

Xen Games is offering a special on basically all their games, which amounts to three (actually, more like 2.5). In this $9.99 bundle, you get Strategic Assault and the Forest Fire add-on along with Interstellar Flames. Strategic Assault was one of the first viable RTS games for the Pocket PC. It had adequate graphics, zero plot, and a flaw in the AI that made the computer a breathtakingly stupid opponent. But, it was easy to play, didn’t have anything unnecessary thrown in, and wasn't a bad game if you played it in the right mood. Interstellar Flames, on the other hand, is a space shoot 'em up somewhat like Zaxxon and StarFox. It looked great and ran fast, but the fatal flaw in this one was the dopey level design, which made the game as monotonous as a Top 40 station after the second level or so. Neither game is exactly groundbreaking, but there are certainly worse things you could spend your $10 on.

Allen Gall’s The Week in Games is a free service of POCKET PC magazine and POCKET PC magazine ONLINE: in-depth articles, tips, an Encyclopedia of Software and Accessories, and links to the best Windows Mobile PDA and Smartphone Web sites

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