Menneisyys

HeroCraft HiTech Co. Ltd., author of the great Battle Cake (see review here) and Arcade Park (see review here) has just released their latest, multiplayer-enabled title Cake Press.



The game is multiplatform (Pocket PC / MS Smartphone / Palm / Symbian S60 and UIQ), allows for cross-platform multiplayer, costs $4.95 and is available here.

The game itself is a standard Tetris-based color matching one. In single-player mode, it may be worth checking out because of its low price and (for the price) nice in-game music. Of course, it can't beat, for example in-game music and graphics-wise, the best color matching game titles, most importantly Super Elemental or, to a lesser degree, Dr. Pocket; both reviewed in the Roundup of All Pocket PC Games Part I. That is, if you don't know the latter two titles and look for a really cool color matching game to be played in single player mode only, check out the latter two titles first.

In this review, I mostly concentrate on the multiplayer aspects of the title as it's multiplayer gaming that the game excels at.



Networking model

The game uses the PDA's Bluetooth unit in native mode (as with Battle Cake); this means no manual networking set-up (for example, creating a BT PAN or Wi-Fi P2P connection) is needed. The lack of TCP/IP support, however, also means it’s impossible to play the game over any other networking technology (including Wi-Fi). Remote gaming is also impossible.

(Multiplayer) compatibility report

It worked great on my following test devices:

1. (Palm Tungsten T3)
2. WM5-upgraded hx4700
3. Dell Axim x51v (ROM version A06) with the 0.50 version of the Widcomm Bluetooth hack
   

On the other hand, the multiplayer mode refused to work on the following devices:

1. my iPAQ h2210, in slave (“join”) mode, has never been recognized by hosting PDA’s and it wasn’t able to host games either (it returned with ‘No opponents found’ at once)
2. my Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720 needed the additional DLL files shipped with (later) Battle Cake versions worked (they’re available here; just copy the two DLL files to \Windows); with them, in server mode, the PL720 was able to find other PDA’s. That is, if there are PL720 PDA’s in a game, they must host it in order to be able to play
3. any device with the Microsoft BT stack (see below, the Cons section)

Pros

1. Cheap
2. Runs on all my test devices; has no compatibility / speed problems. Note that it isn’t compatible with old, pre-WM2003 devices.
3. Cross-platform multiplayer support (tested and worked between Palm - my Palm Tungsten T3 - and Pocket PC)
4. The mass multiplayer mode works OK, without performance or stability problems (tested between my PL720, hx4700, Palm T3 and Widcomm-based x51v, the game being hosted by the PL720). A screenshot of this to show it indeed worked can be found here (showing the Pocket Loox 720 has found all the three other devices) and here (showing the results of a game)
   

Cons

1. No Microsoft BT stack support any more. This is a big step in the wrong direction!
   
   While Battle Cake supports the Microsoft BT stack, Cake Press doesn’t do the same. My x51v (with the original MS BT stack) and my HTC Wizard didn’t at all enter the host/join session – nothing happened when I tried to activate hosting/joining.
   

Compared to...

There’re two other multiplayer Tetris games: the free CanTris (see review here, in the Definitive Multiplayer PPC Game Roundup) and int13’s Fight Cube. The former is more of a multiplayer game and, therefore, may be more fun (speed is really important in it); I haven’t been able to test the latter because the int13 folks haven’t responded to my mails (I’ve sent at least two to them asking for a review copy with working multiplayer. Anyone from int13 reading this?!). That is, I can only compare Cake Press to CanTris.

The support for up to four players is a definite advantage of Cake Press; so is the in-game music (and the game’s looking far better). The above-mentioned arcade mode of CanTris, however, is a big plus.

Verdict

As Tetris isn’t really meant for multiplayer gaming, it’s pretty hard to come up with anything really revolutionary. While CanTris fares slightly better in this respect, the authors of Cake Press can’t be blamed for not producing a really revolutionary game.

As far as just a “plain” Tetris clone with parallel playing is concerned, however, Cake Press fares pretty good. Give it a try if you have the necessary (Widcomm Bluetooth stack or Palm/Symbian-based) hardware if you want to play Tetris with your friends.

Recommended reading

The Definitive Multiplayer PPC Game Roundup

The ‘Games’ section(s) in the Pocket PC Mag Expert Blog

__________________
MS MVP- Mobile Devices.

w3iner

LOL seems like a good game, at a good price. On the other hand, how often am I sitting around thinking, gee, I bet someone around here has Cake-Maker Tetris and they want to play with me. Lan tetris just is not that popular in my opinion.

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