Brand new, 3.0 version of Atomic Cannon out; now, with support for multiplayer!

Menneisyys · 12-06-07, 01:03 PM

No wonder Atomic Cannon was the winner in both the Pocket PC: Games: Classic Arcade and the Smartphone: Classic Arcade categories. It’s a far cry away from “traditional” strategic artillery simulations where you only have a handful of (or, in cases, a single) weapon type(s). Even the, during judging, still current pre-3 versions had a lot of contents and depth; for example, they had 86 different weapons. Yes, WAY more than any Windows Mobile Worms clone.

Now, with version 3.0, major updates have been done. First and foremost, a (lounge-based) multiplayer mode supporting 2…16 players, which also displays the creator’s name (as opposed to, for example, the last-reviewed lounge-based MP title, the otherwise excellent Rabbit Wars by AIM Productions) and lets for chatting, has been added. (More on this later.) In addition, the new version boasts the following:

• 18 all new weapons
• Supply drops which contain credits, health, weapons, or traps
• Walls and bunkers
• Airburst weapons
• Jetpacks
• Mines
• Sentry turrets
• Hazmat armor
• Balanced weapons
• Fixed beam weapons

As with all the recent titles of Isotope244 Graphics LLC (except for the Shadow of the Beast-alike Atomic Battle Dragons), it natively supports all screen resolutions, including VGA (in high-res mode!) and even low-resolution (176*220) MS Smartphones. A handful of screenshots follow, showing these two extremes:

(Main menu - VGA PPC)

(Main menu – 176*220 Smartphone)

(In-game - VGA PPC)

(In-game – 176*220 Smartphone)

Availability, compatibility, price

The game is available HERE and is a free upgrade for all previous Atomic Cannon customers. If you're a new customer, it'll cost you $19.99.

There is a trial version with some restrictions (for example, no multiplayer support).

It's compatible with all WM2003 devices. I haven't had any problems running it on any of my recent WM5 / WM6 Pocket PC's or Smartphones, including even the WM2003 HP iPAQ 2210.

In-game music

As with Machines at War, if you purchase the game and ask the developer for the high-quality soundtracks, you’ll be sent their URL. Then, just remember to copy these MP3’s to the Music subdirectory of your installation. (Note that the version so far, before my discovering it, had a bug that prevented these MP3 files from being played, except for the very first one.) These music tracks are, at last, not worse than those of Acky's XP Breakout, another high-quality title of the same developer – which is certainly good news, as Acky has really-really great in-game tunes.

MS Smartphone support

As has already been mentioned, the title supports the touchscreen-less MS Smartphone platform. It’s a lot slower to aim, select the weapon and set the power (due to the lack of the touchscreen) on this platform, but, after all, it’s working.

(A quick tip: on MS Smartphones, the game starts in Landscape mode. There’re several Smartphone models (for example, the HTC s310 / Oxygen) with very bad and headache-causing polarization problems in Landscape. With them, you’ll want to switch to Portrait mode at once.)

Strategy – more than ever!

As has already been pointed out, this isn’t just a simple artillery game (any more). While the randomness is indeed a factor (unlike, for example, in comparable, high-quality titles like Orions or Starcraft). For example, each weapon has different characteristics. In Strarcraft or any decent strategy game, it’s essential to know these in order to be able to win (fortunately, there’re fewer units / spells in Starcraft than in this title); Atomic Cannon takes this further and even provides the necessary weapon stats in-game. This is shown in the following example screenshot:

(low-res SP screenshot)

Indicentally, it’s the second tab of the weapon purchase dialog, which is as follows (again, in its full VGA glory):

(same on a low-res SP)

Multiplayer

Unfortunately, as of this writing, multiplayer still doesn’t work on Windows Mobile, only on desktop Windows and Mac. Hopefully the developer will very soon fix the problems.

While it’s possible to start a server and see these servers from a client as can be seen in the following screenshot:

(QVGA screenshot)

connecting to a server will always result in being failed (screenshot HERE).

Adding support for multiplayer to Isotope244’s other, recent “best played against another human”, excellent Real-Time Strategy title, Machines at War (reviewed several times on my blog) is, currently, the most demanded feature. This can clearly be seen in the current state of the votes on the game’s homepage. This also shows people do want multiplayer – hope this will help in Isotope’s quickly fixing this bug. However, in the meantime, feel fee to enjoy the game in single player or hotseat (non-inter-device) multiplayer – it certainly is one of the best Windows Mobile games.

I'll let you all know (in an article update) when a version with really working multiplayer is out. Until then, only use it in the desktop (Windows / Mac) versions.

Verdict

Go and check out this title and forget your preconceptions about the genre (if any) - you'll love it. Atomic Cannon has become a GREAT strategy game. Don't be mislead by the "oh, it's just a simple, boring artillery shooter" first looks. After some minutes of playing (and, particularly, when the multiplayer support is fixed), you’ll see how strong the strategy component is.