Plants  ::  Owen's Monster Truck  ::  Thought of the Week

Plants

Plant Tycoon is rather unusual, and I've never seen anything quite like it on other platforms. Basically, it simulates running a nursery, which means buying seeds, nurturing them into healthy, mature plants, selling said plants, and taking the proceeds to buy grow more plants and upgrade your nursery. Unlike most business simulations, Plant Tycoon actually has a goal beyond becoming a "tycoon:" you can cross-breed plants, and the ultimate goal is to "generate" four magical plants. The plants you cross-breed scale nicely, and command higher fees than the ones your start out with.

Watching plants grow is rather dull, and PT gets around this by having the game run in realtime. This means that when your PDA is turned off, the game keeps running. The problem with this approach is that, even when the game is set to its slowest setting, the plants are rather high maintenance. They’ll need to be fed and watered daily and protected from getting infested. The moment they become mature, you need to slap a price tag on them, or you'll lose your investment. To me, this model of game play makes PT a little hard to deal with. I'm the type who likes to play a game in spurts for days at a time and then leave it for a while. I've owned the Petrakis and PocketMonkey pets on Palm, and while PortaMonkey works pretty well since you just need to feed it every few days, I couldn't keep up with the PortaFish's daily feedings. If you leave PT for more than a day or two, you’ll load the game up to find your plants rotting, and you’ll be out of business quicker than you can say, "shameful neglect." The game does have a pause feature, but you'll still have to wait for it to get caught up after you unpause it. I like Plant Tycoon's design and game play, but it's a little too high maintenance for my tastes.

Owen's Monster Truck

I’m not sure who Owen is (apparently he and some of his friends have monster trucks), but the idea of the game named after him is to race oversized trucks around on busy urban freeways. This is just the latest in a series of racing games developed by OmniG, including such titles as Mini-TransCanada and Mini-Sportsbike. If you haven't heard of those titles, it's because they ran like slideshows in tiny windows and just didn't play very well at all. OmniG appears to have learned from some of its mistakes, since OMT runs very smoothly in a screen that takes up a majority of the display. The menus are also a lot nicer than in past titles, showing off some good rendering, although they have an unsettling habit of briefly spitting you back to the desktop while loading. This doesn't affect game play per se, but it's still annoying.

Speaking of game play, this is where the game still falls short. Despite the inclusion of cartoon Owen and his friends, the game doesn't quite come across as having any real character. The little trucks look good and the tracks are well designed. The game also includes interactive elements like shells you can launch at other trucks, wrenches you can use to repair your truck (the damage modeling is quite good and affects how your truck performs), and bonuses you can collect along the way. Although the truck doesn’t have the greatest handling, it's usable and does have a fairly decent implementation of the "slide" effect common in fantasy racing games. However, there's only one point of view, a distant chase car angle that’s too far back and too low to the ground to allow you to see what’s going on at times. The controls also aren't quite where they need to be. For starters, there's no way to accelerate apart from hitting the up arrow on the d-pad. Having to steer while pushing up is really very awkward and makes the game difficult to play. There’s an auto-accelerate option, but it takes control away from the player and makes cornering difficult. OMT also includes on-screen controls, but these are awkwardly placed near the top of the screen. Owen's Monster Truck does have some charm and is a significant advancement over OmniG's other titles. Flashy graphics aside, though, it’s still not quite ready from primetime.

Thought of the Week

Those who make third-party upgrades for the various Pocket PC models ought to have some sort of trade-in upgrade feature for their products. For example, when you upgrade to a newer device, you should be able to get the item (GPS, carrying case, etc.) for the newer device (assuming it's available) by turning in the old item and paying a small premium instead of having to buy a whole new product.

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

This Newsletter is published by Thaddeus Computing, Inc., 110 North Court Street, Fairfield, IA 52556.

Allen Gall’s The Week in Games  Copyright © 2004 by Thaddeus Computing Inc.

##OptOutURLSingleList##

If you want to manage your newsletter subscriptions or change your newsletter format (HTML, Text), use this link.