Gp2X Game Reviews

[bunny]

I know you can post reviews on the OpenHandHelds site, but you're restricted there to a line or two, and I felt like writing at rather more length. So, should anyone be interested, I've posted up a few reviews of GP2X games (downloaded from OHH) on my "2XGB" blog. The reviews are much too long to repeat here, so I'll link to them with a quick summary. I'm hoping to continue this, and maybe also give a little attention to those titles which were released after the main period of GP2X activity and so haven't had any reviews on OHH.

I've not employed any specific criteria as far as selecting games goes, though they have to be playable on my own machine (F100B/fw 3.0.0/no extras) and I like some genres more than others; for example, I'm not a beat-em-up fan at all, so I doubt you'll see many fighting games reviewed. So far I've found at least something to enjoy in every game I've tried. The biggest whinge is the difficulty in some titles of reducing volume levels to be sensible while wearing headphones.

Each game is rated for Addictiveness, Depth, Controls, Graphics, Sound, Documentation and Completeness; the main score, though, is not a straight average but an overall impression. (For example, the Blazar demo, which did okay in most of the subcategories scores poorly overall because of its stupidly short time limit.) Anyway, here are links to the full assessments of each of the games I've reviewed so far, in alphabetical order, with overall scores out of 10:

Animatch -- 10
"An absolute must-have"

Blazar (demo) -- 5
Demo time limit "simply too restrictive"

Blix2x -- 7
"A nice little diversion"

Dont Get Crushed -- 5
"Reminiscent of the games you got on mobile phones the best part of a decade ago"

Knight Lore -- 8
"Satisfying and well-crafted" but "rock-hard"

Shippy 1984 -- 7
"If you like Galaxian, you'll probably like Shippy 1984"

ztunnel -- 8
"Very reminiscent of a DOS-based game from the early-mid 1990s"

 

[Ziz]

Oh, looks cool, I will give it a look tomorrow.
I hope, you would like to review some of my gp2x games, too, when their are finished (at the moment, I have one, which is finished, but needs some tuning and new levels and are be in the making)

greetings, Ziz

 

[bunny]

Thanks, Ziz. And sure, I'd be happy to review your games when they're ready. That goes for anyone else reading this, too: I accept requests!

 

[bunny]

Three more reviews for you, with links to the full assessment and overall score out of 10, as well as a brief extract from my thoughts:

Chess2X -- 6
"This is v0.4, and in truth it sometimes feels like it ... I wasn't blown away by it"

Castle of Dr. Malvado -- 7
"I'd prefer a less unforgiving difficulty level early on, a bit more clarity about where to stand and much better documentation"

River Crossing -- 6
"Likeable ... rather too many niggles for a game given a v1 version number, that sound problem especially"

 

[Nightbird]

Thanks for your reviews Bunny. I've enjoyed reading them. It's rejuvenated my interest in Knight Lore. I used to play this game as a youngster.

 

[Ziz]

I rly have to test Castle of Dr. Malvado if the RIOT Contest is over and I have a bit more freetime. ^^
I am not very a "chessman", so the chess2x isn't my game. But it's quite amazing, that these old piece of hardware is able to play better then average players.

 

[bunny]

Thanks, both of you. As far as chess goes, I remember even Colossus Chess in the 1980s being fairly strong, so it's no surprise that the far more powerful GP2X can be.

 

[Parkydr]

Chess2X is GPL licensed. The source with the licence is in the archive. I probably should put it in the released version too.

As the Readme says, it uses the xboard protocol (no code) which is just some text commands.
The gnuchess executable is included but no changes were made to the code, I just built it.

The front end is all my own work. That's why the menus are crap

To kill the sound try removing the move_sound and take_sound files from the chess2xdata directory or even better, replace them with better sounds.


Edit:

A couple of points:

1) During a game "Select" lets you save or abandon the game and return to the main menu
2) There is a audio player as well (press A) but it's not much good for anything but low bit rate files - chess uses too much CPU

 

[bunny]

Right; thanks for clearing those things up. I've added an extra paragraph to the end of the Chess2X review with the points you mentioned.

 

[Parkydr]

Right; thanks for clearing those things up. I've added an extra paragraph to the end of the Chess2X review with the points you mentioned.

Thanks, I may do an update following your review. I haven't done any more development to it because I hadn't had anymore feedback.

I wasn't quite sure what you meant by "sticky" wrt the controls. The only thing I thought was that auto repeat on the cursor movement might be an improvement.

 

[bunny]

I wasn't quite sure what you meant by "sticky" wrt the controls. The only thing I thought was that auto repeat on the cursor movement might be an improvement.

It's a little tricky to describe, but in essence: occasionally I felt that the cursor movement wasn't quite keeping up with my button-pressing. The delay was only very slight, but it was noticeable. (If you do update the program at some point, then of course I'll be happy to mention that. )

 

[Parkydr]

And another thing...

Re: sound. The volume works for me, but you do need to press the keys a number of times - another place where auto-repeat would help.

 

[bunny]

A few more reviews for your delight and delectation. As always, comments are very welcome, especially if I've made a mistake or missed anything.

REWORD -- 8
"If you're a fan of word games and want something that will give the linguistic part of your mind a good workout, then this might well be what you're looking for."

Super Pixel Jumper -- 6
"...makes a virtue out of simplicity: you can pick it up in seconds and yet keep playing for a while before you get bored."

Fy.WoD! -- 6
"A potentially super game, but in its current form it's just too unforgiving..."

 

[Parkydr]

Chess2X version is now available in the archive.

 

[bunny]

Chess2X version is now available in the archive.

Thanks for reminding me about the release of v0.5; I'll make a post about it in the next few days, and (judging on a very quick play) probably bump my review score up slightly. It does seem a bit more polished now.

Anyway, here are a few more reviews:

NetHack (CaduHack) -- 9
"...about as good a port of NetHack as anybody could reasonably expect on the GP2X."

Hamster's Escape -- 4
"...there's no getting away from the fact that Hamster's Escape is not a very good game."

BubbleX -- 5
"...a pleasant little puzzle game ... could have rated a little higher had it not been so obviously unfinished."