Now that I work 17-18 hours a day on the Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine Best Software Awards 2006 evaluation, comparison and, what is even more important, a whole slew of new product roundups (I’m absolutely sure you all will be very delighted to read them! Stay tuned ), I routinely check all the titles I evaluate whether they have received an update in the meantime.

Upon one of my tests (tested whether one of the best shooter games, Enslave, has received a new version), I’ve run into a not-yet-reviewed, promising game, TURBO REACTION 2: Free Emotion from the same developer, MoreGames Entertainment.



Game genre

There are quite few games of this type on the Pocket PC; most importantly, TapzMania: Bug Killer by RU0 games, reviewed in the Definitive Multiplayer PPC Game Roundup and sold for $11.95 (or, in the four-pack bundle reviewed here, for $25, bundled with three, well, not very good but still passable other games).

There isn’t much to be said on the game itself: you have to hit the sprites as accurately and quickly as possible. If you like really siple, but entertaining games, you may want to give it a try.

Availability

The game is available here, has a demo version (unfortunately, with only 5 levels enabled) and costs $9.95.



Compatibility

It has no problems running on my PPC2k2 (tested on my iPAQ 3660), WM2003 (tested on my iPAQ 2210) and WM2003SE (including VGA; tested on the PL720) devices. It, however, isn’t compatible with WM5 at all – tested on my all three WM5 devices.

In-game music

Many of you know I was on the PC scene as a coder and diskmag editor some 14-17 years ago (yes, in the infancy of the PC as a demo/home computer). Therefore, the in-game/in-menu music struck me as “hey, I do know these!”. A quick glance at blit.exe, from position 0x6b848 revealed I was right: the 16-channel module has been composed by Big Bear / FT, his well-known module ‘Jetstream’, which was one of the contenders at the party PAiN 9/97. It’s also available on his homepage (direct download link here).

The menu music is “Towards Immortality”, has been composed by Finnish Groo / The Black Robes, was second in the music section of great Finnish demoparty Assembly back in 1992 and is available here for download.

(Yeah, scener background and having attended a LOT of demo parties can be pretty advantageous some time, even at writing reviews of Pocket PC games ).

Pros

1. Great, stereo, tracked music. I’d like to see more and more Pocket PC games using stereo (!), tracked music, preferably composed by sceners.
2. Simple, entertaining

Cons

1. Price: for $10, you can get considerably better generic action titles like those of PDAMill or iDreams (SkyForce Reloaded or Flux Challenge, anyone?). As far as strictly this genre is concerned, TapzMania: Bug Killer is definitely a better buy for only $2 more.
2. Absolutely no WM5 support
3. QVGA resolution (the homepage states “VGA compatible” – this, in this case too, only means compatibility, NOT using high resolution)
4. Any kind of notification bubbles crash the game

Compared to...

When compared to the, in my opinion, best game of this genre, TapzMania , I don't think TURBO REACTION 2 has anything to write home about. TapzMania has probably the best in-game (tracked) music I've ever heard in a Pocket PC action game and is far more entertaining, particularly in multiplayer mode. Also, TapzMania is WM5-compliant, unlike TURBO REACTION 2.

Verdict

This title is, unfortunately, in no way as groundbreaking and revolutionary as Enslave by the same developer. You may, however, want to give it a try, especially if you can listen to the in-game scener music and (already) find TapzMania boring – assuming you have a pre-WM5 device. If you have a WM5 device, forget it.

Other than that, if you haven't tested as yet, give a try to TapzMania first. I'm pretty sure you'll like it a lot, particularly its music. Also, you may want to look at action - color matcher games if you still need the action element ("shoot as quickly and precisely as possible"); for example, Astraware Zuma or DragonBall, both reviewed in the Roundup of Zuma / Luxor clones on the Pocket PC.

Other, related articles

PocketMatrix's review of part I

UPDATE: In the meantime, I’ve also scrutinized the (great) music used in Enslave. It also uses scener music (probably this is why there is no “music credits” in the game, only “sound” - that is, in-game sounds like explosions). For example, credits_outro.mus is Slice’s astronomic track.1 available for download here.

Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices, 2006, 2007. See my PPC & SP blog HERE.

    

Article updated.

Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices, 2006, 2007. See my PPC & SP blog HERE.

    

Article updated with references to TapzMania and Zuma/Luxor clones.

Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices, 2006, 2007. See my PPC & SP blog HERE.