N-Gage - Hands On

[sithlordx]

So I have played Nokia's gaming console and I can officaly say its a load of balls, right from the look of it you realise how messed up the design is, the screen is too small, there are too many buttons and they are placed out wrong. Insted of making it a music player and a phone Nokia should have just concentrated on the gaming aspect of it all, their inexperiance really shows.

Games

Tony Hawks

The most impressive title, seems to be an exact port of the original PS version graphically sound and controls well enough the small screen makes the camera awkward at times though.

Moto GP

Not very good at all the graphics are a shambles Pop up galore the handling is wank. AVOID

Sonic N

Same old Sonic here, nice and fast and the graphics were suitably crisp I liked

Overall impressions - Nokia are gonna struggle big time and the price will have to be lower than ?299 over here too even make me think about it.

[martTM]

We've got two of them, right here.

And you're not going to like the price... it's less than ?299, but you still ain't going to like it.

[Xexex]

We've got two of them, right here.

And you're not going to like the price... it's less than ?299, but you still ain't going to like it.

It's about ?230, I think.

And I still say it was a lot better than I was expecting.

Tim (tm)

[JibberX]

I've already got a phone/mp3 player and a gba, so what am gonna want an n-gage for? radio? Also I have the cunning ability to not take my phone with me when I am playing games and vica versa, I like the contingency.

[Brats]

Regardless of the hardware and price, what games are on the platform that could make a person buy this over an SP or wait for the PSP? The one trump card the system has is online play on the move and yet there seems to be very little to exploit this, at least at launch.

I can play Sonic on my GBA, I've played Tony Hawks to death and Pandemonium was a crap game when it was on the PSone. Why do I, or anyone else, need an N-Gage?

[Shez]

?230 is closer to the retail price.

A lot of the latest mobile phones retail at well over ?200, so I am not so sure the price for the N-Gage is over the top.

Personally I wouldnt buy one. I dont like hand held gaming at all, but trying to look at it objectively, I wouldn't be surprised if this did well.

If youngsters i.e: teenagers are looking to upgrade their mobile phones, then I would guess that this little gadget would be high up on the list as a viable replacement to their crumbly out of date present phone.

Oh, and pandemonium wasnt crap

[JRMacumber]

?230 is closer to the retail price.

A lot of the latest mobile phones retail at well over ?200, so I am not so sure the price for the N-Gage is over the top.

Good god you guys have expensive phones! Crap, most plans over hear come with free phones, and if you want better you'll rarely spend over $100 to $150.

[quexex]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-08-22&res=l

After seing this I can now nolonger look at anything to do with n-gage without laughing!

Cheers

Quexex

[mid]

Changing the subject slightly, am I the only one who vastly preferred the isometric design of Tony Hawk 2 on the GBA to the third-person view in the Playstation version, and so doesn't see the point of the N-Gage doing it the flash but unusable way?

[shock33]

Changing the subject slightly, am I the only one who vastly preferred the isometric design of Tony Hawk 2 on the GBA to the third-person view in the Playstation version, and so doesn't see the point of the N-Gage doing it the flash but unusable way?

Yes....


Yes you are....

[Xexex]

?230 is closer to the retail price.

A lot of the latest mobile phones retail at well over ?200, so I am not so sure the price for the N-Gage is over the top.

Good god you guys have expensive phones! Crap, most plans over hear come with free phones, and if you want better you'll rarely spend over $100 to $150.

The price quoted is off-contract, I believe.

Tim (tm)

[Burai]

Good god you guys have expensive phones! Crap, most plans over hear come with free phones, and if you want better you'll rarely spend over $100 to $150

The same is true over hear also. I've never paid for mobile phone hardware in my life.

Sadly the buzz around ECTS was that no UK mobile suppliers are going to be offering reduced N-Gage's as part of their contract deals due to a completely universal SIMM slot and that it competes with Java services like Vodafone Live.

We shall see.

[Strider]

Good god you guys have expensive phones! Crap, most plans over hear come with free phones, and if you want better you'll rarely spend over $100 to $150

Sadly the buzz around ECTS was that no UK mobile suppliers are going to be offering reduced N-Gage's as part of their contract deals due to a completely universal SIMM slot and that it competes with Java services like Vodafone Live.

We shall see.

I totally agree, if you could pick an Ngage up for around 99quid, it might look more viable. Also you cant really compare it to an expensive phone, as Nokia is now insisting that the N-Gage is a console first and foremost and just happens to allow phone access

So if you then compare it (as many consumers will) to the GBA, its grossly over priced.

[Peet]

I tried Sonic and Pandemonium when Nokia demoed the N-Gage around here a while ago and I found them to be anything but nice and crisp.
Both seemed to suffer from a poor framerate and from the vertical orientation of the screen. Especially Sonic N seemed a LOT worse than Sonic Advance (2) - it's impossible to see ahead of you because of the screen shape and the animations looked like they were missing a bunch of frames compared to SA. I haven't played Pandemonium on any other machine so I can't compare but I suppose the graphics were the same early PSX quality as the original.
I also thought the screen suffered from low contrast and faded/muted colours, but that might just be because the whole thing took place out in the sun.

[Tig]

I have a friend who not-so-long-ago acquired a 300-quid mobile.

This appears to be his prized possesion, as it goes with him everywhere.

Said phone's features: built-in camera, email facility, basic (e.g. pac-man) games available for download. That's pretty much it. For 300 quid.

When mobile-owning tennagers see Tony Hawk's running on a phone, I bet plenty will pay the horrific price to be the first to get there. Just you wait.