You bet it can. For a start, these aren’t your average underpowered Ford Focuses that your local bobby tootles around in. Rather, the cars you step into in Need For Speed Hot Pursuit are lean, mean growling thoroughbreds from some of the most prestigious real-life sports car manufacturers in the world. With flashing lights and cup holders (probably).

Nokia Lumia 800 game: EVAC review

And really, what could be more thrilling than hunting down a perp in one of these exotic cars? The game offers up a bunch of tasks based around such a premise. There’s your standard pursuit mode (and variations thereof), whereby you must catch up with criminals and bash them until they crash, deploying road blocks and other such gadgets at select points. There are also straight-ahead races in which you must take on your fellow coppers in a spot of extra-curricular oneupmanship. There are also against the clock dashes where precision and focus is the key.

All of these race modes are joined together in a nifty career mode, where wins mean cash and cash means levelling up and levelling up means a shiny new car with marginally better stats. This isn’t the most technical racer, so the differences between cars aren’t particularly nuanced, but the game as a whole undoubtedly gets better relative to the hardware at your disposal.

Of course, if you still find yourself hankering for something a little more illicit then there’s always the option of playing through the career of an undercover street racer – which basically means doing the same things as above from the opposite perspective. So you have to avoid aggressive cops as they try to bring you down, and race against your fellow crooks. It’s essentially the main cop career with a few minor changes in graphics and goals, but it certainly extends the life of the game somewhat.

As hinted at, the racing at the core of Need For Speed Hot Pursuit isn’t particularly advanced. By default, your car auto-accelerates, and you tilt your handset to steer. We found the steering to be a little lacking in responsiveness by default, but this was largely sorted by upping the sensitivity in the options menu. Similarly you can change the auto-accelerate to manual, but the driving model is so forgiving and the tracks so lacking in tight turns that such refined control is unnecessary.

In fact, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit isn’t really about racing – it’s about recharging nitro boosts, near misses with civilian traffic, and deploying an EMP attack at 200mph. As an arcade action game with a fair amount of content (though at £3.99 on the Windows Phone Marketplace, not a generous amount), then, it’s tough to beat on your Nokia Lumia 800. Those looking for an outright racer that accurately replicates the feel of driving will have to look elsewhere.

What do you think of Need For Speed Hot Pursuit? Let us know in the comments section below.

Nokia Lumia 800 game: EVAC review

So, with that intro in mind, is Fragger the next Angry Birds? Not quite, but the premise isn’t entirely dissimilar. The goal is to take out a bunch of targets (army dummies rather than pigs) by judging the trajectory and power of a static projectile launcher.

Unlike Rovio’s blockbuster, though, you’re not operating a slingshot. Rather, your little army chap must lob his small armoury of grenades at the targets. By dragging on the screen, you can adjust your aim via a handy arrow – rather like the aforementioned Worms. Dragging away from your fragger, meanwhile, will increase the power of your throw. Once you’re happy with the firing calculations, simply release the screen and a grenade will be lobbed. It’ll only detonate once it’s come to a complete stop.

Fragger employs some rudimentary physics, so the skill comes in judging the trajectory of the grenade, bouncing it off walls where necessary. There are plenty of interactive elements to spice things up, too. Targets may be hidden behind flimsy cover, which can be removed with an additional grenade. Alternatively, you might be able to sent a target flying off screen (which is as good as blowing them up) by sending a box into them with a handily placed explosive. You can even use the unexploded grenades themselves to topple targets from their lofty perches.

It’s this variety of approaches that keeps Fragger fresh throughout its generous supply of levels. So, too, does the game’s by-now-standard three star award system. Ace a level with as few grenades wasted as possible and you’ll get a full three-medal score. Any less and you’ll pass, but with a lesser award, which naturally won’t sit well with any completionists among you. Getting top marks is easy early on, but extremely tricky in the latter stages of each of the 12 worlds.

Adding interest, too, is the customary Xbox Live integration. Once again you can unlock achievements that contribute to your Xbox Gamerscore – a solid incentive to do well if you’re a dedicated console gamer. Whether this element is worth the full £2.29 charge on the Windows Phone Marketplace we’re not sure – not when the game was initially designed as a free Flash game for your computer.

Still, the level count is generous and the presentation is clean and tidy, if a little bland. It’s not the app with which to show off what your Nokia Lumia 710 can do from a graphical perspective, but then there are plenty of other apps for such a task. 

For a game all about blowing stuff up, Fragger is surprisingly stealthy in its assault on your free time. You’ll find it sneaking into your life whenever you have a spare moment or two as you chase that extra medal, muse over how to hit that bonus box or seek to unlock the next world. Not dynamite, then, but more of a controlled explosion. 

Neon Racer is a racing game for Nokia 700 and other compatible Nokia phones. It is available now on the Ovi Store, at the cost of zero of your pounds and pennies. The idea is that players race for as long as possible, avoiding incoming obstacles while trying to set the best score. Unfortunately, any players are unlikely to be racing for long.

Neon Racers is not so much a racing game as it is a test of players endurance to repeatedly play before growing frustrated. You’re supposed to race for as long as possible without bumping into oncoming red neon girders – bump into them and it’s game over. However, Neon Racer is ridiculously difficult – made worse by unreliable controls.

Two touchscreen arrows on the left and right hand side of the screen in portrait view make for steering controls in either direction. They do work, but just aren’t sensitive enough to handle the speed at which the player is expected to react. A slight carry-on after you’ve let go off either button sees you glide for half a second in that direction – not exactly helpful when attempting to navigate the tightest of spaces.

It all adds to the frustration, that, rather than attempt to do better next time, it isn’t long before you’ve had enough. Power-ups, or power-downs depending on your opinion, slow the game down and speed it up again, but such is the difficulty, you won’t get too much a chance to try these.

Neon Racer is a neat little concept that could have been executed a lot better. It’s a shame because the graphics are nice and bright, but Neon Racer just isn’t that fun to play.

Download: Neon Racer
Size: 0.42MB
Price: Free 

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As with any tower defence game, the principles remain the same. The aim is to protect a goal from incoming waves of enemies using the means at your disposal. Should enough enemies reach this goal, it’s game over.

In Elemental War you protect said goal using elemental creatures that act like stationary barricades using fire, water, lightening and earth attacks. These can be purchased at the start and throughout each stage as you accumulate points. Think of them as weapons you can buy at a store. Each of these vary in cost. Some are more powerful, and faster than others, so purchasing carefully is the key to victory. The cheapest monsters attack the quickest, but are less powerful, encouraging players to mix up their strategy.
 
There are five stages in total, with up to 25 waves of enemies. Effectively all you are required to do is plonk your enemies along a path and hope your strategy pays off. If things are going wrong, you can sell and swap your monsters on the fly, which is neat. However, in practice we didn’t feel the need to because Elemental Wars biggest failure is to offer enough of a challenge to make it worth a repeat play.

You could comfortably set up your stall within the first couple of minutes, and, just, watch. Even during later stages, you’re hoping for the difficulty to ramp up, and the diversity in levels to increase, yet it never does, so you spend most of your time simply observing the action, rather than engaging in it.

The ability to modify your set-up attempts to avoid this, but pick carefully and you’ll rarely, if ever feel the need to do so. Otherwise, Elemental War is a decent little game with clear, and colour graphics, but it is just too easy. Upon clearing its five stages, there is little reason to return because of this. Available for free, Elemental War for the Nokia 700 offers value, but little longevity.

Download: Elemental War
Size: 4.40MB
Price: Free

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You might not have heard of MiniSquadron before, but believe it or not it’s been around on older and creakier smartphone platforms for about the same amount of time as Angry Birds. What’s more, for our money it’s even more enjoyable.

Check out our Nokia Lumia 800 game: Plants vs. Zombies (PvZ) review

While it’s a pretty intense arcade blaster that thinks nothing of repeatedly sending you crashing to a fiery death, MiniSquadron’s lightness of tone, colourful visuals and intuitive controls will see you hooked almost immediately.

The goal is to sweep through nine levels, each of which throws twelve waves of enemy craft at you. Taking control of your little biplane from a side-on perspective, you must swoop, dodge and blast away until you’re the last plane standing (or should that be flying?).

It’s a simple set-up, then, but MiniSquadron succeeds through countless delightful little touches. Take the aforementioned aerial physics, which give your little craft a wonderful sense of heft and inertia. Attack an enemy (which will be weaving about like an angry wasp) from below and you’ll find your craft is slow and cumbersome – and you’ll even risk stalling if you slow too much (the pulling out of which is a fun process in itself). Attack from above, though, and you’ll feel an exhilarating sense of acceleration and maneuverability as you swoop in for the kill.

This tactile system, wedded to a responsive virtual joypad, opens up the possibility of sweeping loop-de-loops and stomach churning ground strafes. It’s exhilarating just flying around in MiniSquadron.

Then there are the planes. When I made reference to biplanes and the Red Baron earlier, I might have made you think MiniSquadron’s universe is a bit stuffy. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are more than 60 planes to unlock in total, and these range from standard propeller-driven biplanes to jet fighters and even UFOs. Each craft possesses its own unique combination of speed, durability and firepower. Some have one cannon, others two, while still others sport whopping great homing missile launchers with which to obliterate the enemy.

Whatever their firepower, though, all planes can take advantage of the power-up stars that frequently float onto the screen. Fly into these (which is a task in itself) and you’ll be blessed with a brief embellishment to your abilities, whether it’s an all-damaging smartbomb, intangibility or a sky scorching laser the width of your craft. In an ingenious twist, your opponents can also collect these power-ups and use them against you.

MiniSquadron is a good-looking game on any phone, but its day-glo world is especially gorgeous on the Nokia Lumia 800’s 3.7-inch AMOLED screen. The primary coloured backgrounds and exotic craft really pop from that display, and all the edges look super-sharp too.

As we’ve mentioned, MiniSquadron has been around on competing platforms for a while now, but with Xbox Live high score and Achievement features this is arguably the finest version yet.

It may not have the instantly recognisable name of Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies, but MiniSquadron is a genuine Grade A Windows Phone blockbuster of the highest calibre.

MiniSquadron is available now for the Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone from the Windows Phone Marketplace at £2.29.

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Fillr features some very cute characters that represent the objects players are tasked with rearranging, in a puzzle game that has a decent premise, but can appear confusing, owing to a lack of clear instructions.

The aim is to fill in as many objects within a grid of the same colour as possible. Games see you begin from the top of a grid with six designated creatures of differing colours. Tapping on them alters the colour of the creature in play, influencing the rest of the board.  

So if you’ve got a screen dominated by pink creatures, you’ll need to alter the colour of your object to pink so that the rest of the screen is taken up by the same type, therefore matching the rest up to score points. You must also be careful not to to use all of your available moves. Use them all before you solve the puzzle, and it’s game over.

Match them up correctly and a star will appear letting you know you’ve been successful. Bombs will sometimes appear too, but the in-game instructions have not explicitly made clear what these bombs actually do. There isn’t even an explanation for the star, although its reason for being becomes obvious. The gist of the instructions says simply to move around colours to fill up a grid. Much of the understanding of how to play has to come down to a little trial and error.

It’s a shame because with more intuitive controls and instructions, Fillr could have delivered a less frustrating experience. A welcoming home menu, with its beautiful twinkly soundtrack gives hope that Fillr is something special. Instead it is a clunky experience that betrays its high presentation values. Sure, it looks cute, but Fillr just doesn’t feel as fun as it should.

The extra modes and options hint at what a great game this could have been. User levels created by other players can be downloaded to play. There is also a mode that has you playing against an A.I opponent called Dark, which works in just the same way as the Quick Play mode, except you start at the top, and Dark starts at the bottom. The first to match all the colours wins. An online mode also adds to the extras by letting you play with other users. As extra features and looks go, top marks.

Fillr is by no means a terrible game. Get into it, and Fillr is a decent puzzler, it’s just that we’ve played better. Fillr is free, so it’s always worth checking out. It’s just a shame that more effort didn’t go in to making the user experience that little more friendly, making Fillr difficult to recommend as a must-have Nokia 700 game.

Download: Fillr
Size: 9.09MB
Price: Free

Check out our Nokia 700 game: Fillr review: 

]]> http://www.noknok.tv/2012/01/16/nokia-lumia-800-game-implode-review/feed/ 0 http://www.noknok.tv/2012/01/12/nokia-lumia-800-game-z0mb1es-on-teh-ph0ne-review/ http://www.noknok.tv/2012/01/12/nokia-lumia-800-game-z0mb1es-on-teh-ph0ne-review/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:00:07 +0000 Jon Mundy http://www.noknok.tv/?p=41971 Z0MB1ES (on teh ph0ne) throws together three solid arcade blasters in one generous package,  making it the place to come if you want to overdose on mindless old skool action on your Nokia Lumia 800. Find out what it’s all about with our Z0MB1ES (on teh ph0ne) review on the Nokia Lumia 800.

We say mindless, but Z0MB1ES has been put together with a degree of thoughtfulness and consideration that other Windows Phone game developers should pay heed to. It rolls together three separate shooters (well, maybe two and a half) including two versions of an Xbox darling and its spiritual sequel.

Check out our Nokia Lumia 800 game: Plants vs. Zombies (PvZ) review

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1 is the main dish served up here, having blasted its way over from the Xbox 360’s Indie Games store. It’s a top-down twin-stick shooter that sees you facing seemingly endless waves of zombie attackers. By moving with one virtual analogue stick and shooting with another, you’re afforded full independent 360 control of both.

You’ll need it too, as the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you. You’re often set upon by dozens of enemies simultaneously – and usually from multiple angles.

Fortunately you get a healthy smattering of power-ups to assist you, from a meaty rocket launcher to a powerful shotgun. Each is supremely satisfying to use, but it’s the thoughtful management of them that often means the difference between a grisly death and surviving to the next wave. For instance, each power-up comes with a finite supply of ammo, so rather than picking them up willy-nilly it’s a good idea to hold off until you’re near empty. Of course, if you pick up two power-ups of the same type you get double the ammo. Nice.

What really sets IMAGWZII apart, though, is its music. Rather than go with a generic piece of music, the developer has recorded its own self-referencing song to accompany your zombie slaying. This song is about the very game that you’re playing, but is sung in the faux-impassioned style of a whiny rocker. It’s ace.

Even better than that, the game responds to the tempo of the 13 minute-long song. In the loud and aggressive chorus, for example, the game is correspondingly manic, while in the quite ambient bit the enemies change completely to a spacey Asteroids homage.

ENL3SSZ0MB1ES!!1 is more of a remix of IMAGWZII than a stand-alone title, but it’s a worthy one. Here, rather than being limited to the length of a quirky song and a static arena, you’re placed into an endless high-score attack of themed rooms. Once you’ve cleared one you can move on to the next. It’s the same basic gameplay, but each game tends to last a lot longer.

That brings us to Time Viking, which is a distinct experience based on similar building blocks. There’s the same dual-control approach to shooting, but here you’re limited to moving side to side and shooting above and to the side of your character. Think of it as a slightly freer take on Space Invaders, as you’re fixed to a single plane.

If this sounds a little limited compared to the other two games, that’s because it is. We doubt you’ll spend as much time on it as the other two, but Time Viking does have its charms. For one thing, it looks a whole lot better than the other two games. Where the two zombie blasters have pretty functional graphics, Time Viking has some lovely character art and some truly impressive laser show visuals. It also has its own self-referential song, which is always welcome.

In isolation, none of these games would have been quite worth the £2.29 it will cost you for all three on the Windows Phone Marketplace. As a package, though, we’d recommend it to any action-loving Nokia Lumia 800 owners.

Check out our Z0MB1ES (on teh ph0ne) review photo gallery:

]]> http://www.noknok.tv/2012/01/06/nokia-lumia-800-game-gravity-guy-review/feed/ 0 http://www.noknok.tv/2012/01/04/nokia-lumia-800-game-plants-vs-zombies-pvz-review/ http://www.noknok.tv/2012/01/04/nokia-lumia-800-game-plants-vs-zombies-pvz-review/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:00:17 +0000 Alex Bentley http://www.noknok.tv/?p=41491 Ranking alongside Angry Birds and Tetris as one of the best pick-up-and-play games of all time, Plants vs. Zombies – or PvZ  – is a must buy for the Nokia Lumia 800. Bringing its unique brand of addictive gameplay to the Nokia Windows Phone, we’ve been battling the undead to see how this all-time classic looks and plays on the new Nokia handset.

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