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Earth Day :: News |
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The game I played most this week: Earth Day
Outer Space: Earth Day
Earth Day is apparently based somewhat on the national holiday we have here in the U.S. It’s an arcade game based in outer space, with mechanics that are somewhat like Asteroids. The difference is that your guns are mounted on a rotating axis in the center of the screen (you can also have multiple weapons firing at once). This solves the problem of moving to dodge an asteroid, only to have end up bouncing all over the screen as you try to stop your ship from the momentum of your thrusters. (That is one thing that drove me batty about the original Asteroids). A second difference is that you start the game with a certain number of points you can distribute among five different areas: rotational speed, force field, firepower, clones, and rapid fire. Aside from just being neat, this feature allows you to customize the game to suit your game style and compensate for your shortcomings. If you find yourself moving a little too slowly, you can kick up the rapid fire rate and rotational speed. If you find yourself dying too quickly, you can kick up the shields. The game itself is very short and sweet. The sprite graphics aren’t bad looking, and I would describe them as a bit above average. The use of color is nice, but they don’t quite have the sharpness and shading found in other titles (such as PDAMill’s Anthelion, as an example). They look a bit like the quality you’d find in a top-shelf shareware game from around 1992 or 1993. Not a bad thing, necessarily, since we’re still in the dark ages of graphics on our mobile devices. The controls actually work very well, if you use the d-pad to rotate your ship. Limiting the game mechanics to rotating your ship helps out, here, since a great deal of precision isn’t a requirement. I wouldn’t recommend using the stylus, though, as it just doesn’t work too well. The game’s audio is about at the same level of the graphics: very good but not exceptional. The game’s basic design is one level survival mode (meaning you just see how long you can last). This greatly simplifies things from a development perspective and helps the game retain the charm of Asteroids-era titles. However, I would think at least a couple of other game modes, say a timed mode or a score challenge, would spice it up a lot. Earth Day is still a very addictive title and a feather in the cap of eSoft. Think of it as Asteroids, simplified and yet beefed up in interesting ways.
News – Our Blog To be honest, I haven’t really been checking the official SP & PPC magazine blogs much. I no longer follow the news on a daily basis, so I don’t do any Pocket PC-related blogging. I just checked out the blogs to see how they were doing, and there’s a lot of interesting content on there. In particular, I would check out Werner’s (Menneisyys) and Ben Stanley’s. Over the last month or so, Werner has focused heavily on the emulation scene and has a ton of timely information on the various emulation packages available. Ben Stanley’s blog, on the other hand, has frequent game reviews and items of general interest as well. |
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Gall's The Week in Games is a free service of Smartphone & Pocket
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Michelle Talley. This Newsletter is published by Thaddeus Computing, Inc., 110 North Court Street, Fairfield, IA 52556. Allen Gall's The Week in Games Copyright © 2007 by Thaddeus Computing Inc. |
