N-gage games are getting better!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great action, impressive graphics, with a creepy horror theme.

Cons: N-gage Arena features are sleep-inducing.

The Bottom Line: 
This is a 1st person shooter that N-gage needed badly. Makes up for Red Faction easily!

Author's Review
N-gage seemed so exciting to many of us when we first saw the video of Tomb Raider for it. It was like a pocket playstation. But we all now realize that it's just never going to be ready to compete with Nintendo DS or Playstation Portable. Red Faction was just one 1st person shooter, but was already enough to show us that N-gage just couldn't make a great 1st person shooter. But out of the clouds, straight from the heavens, comes Ashen, a horror-themed 1st person shooter that sets out to put our faith back in the N-gage. Did Nokia do it right this time? Heck YEAH!!


Look, nobody said that Red Faction was a piece of crap. I love it. I'm still trying to beat it and it's fun. But Ashen is clearly a game that shows the effort put into it.
Similar to Doom, Ashen is a fast-paced 1st person shooter that has you battling after creepy-crawling monsters and terrors in a evil-infested town where you are looking for your sister whom you thought was making all of this up. As you make your way through Ashen, you find plenty of action. Ashen pits you against 9 unique and intelligently behaving enemies, one of which is invisible and requires special "ghost goggles" to see! The game takes a single player through 8 huge levels of challenging terror. The only disspointing thing about the levels is that there isn't a terribly large amount of different paths to take. In fact, there's virtually always just one direct path to take through the villages. The underwater areas are very vast and large, but are only home to bonus items and not secret areas (at least not that I know of. I feel like I've checked them out pretty well, but I could always have missed something!).

The game's action is easily comparable to Quake moreso than Doom, since it's graphics are as appealing as Quake's was. And it's the same idea as Quake. Making your way through the twisting mazes of the cities of hell. Except this is on earth, not hell. But it's all good. But the gameplay also follows in the ways of Silent Hill as well, but only in the sense that every now and then you'll stop and comment on what's going on. For example: "Hmmm. Blood on the ground. That wasn't there before. Who's is it?" and "Too late! Where is she??", and "The roof! I've got to get there!". This enhances the game by reminding us constantly that there's actually a human being involved here instead of just moving around shooting like some flying pod.


You have a pleasant array of 9 weapon types from dual handguns to rocket launchers and alien pulse guns. The alien pulse gun is quite a weak gun that doesn't inflict much damage, but it's kinda cool to watch go off and I guess when you're running out, it's better than having nothing. It's too bad that Ashen doesn't have exploding barrels like in Doom. I guess the truth is that Ashen isn't quite as retchedly bloody as DOOM was (which is a downside), but that's not to say that it isn't great. It certainly comes out on top in graphics. No blocky 2-D imps and firey skulls here. These are enemies to proud of!

N-gage's sound quality is also something that is sure to be ashamed of when compared to the Playstation Portable. But I haven't heard the playstation portable yet (even though I know it'll be amazing), so I did manage to appreciate N-gage's. The game Ashen has an eerie and haunting soundtrack
that plays throughout your adventure. Don't worry about any annoying 2-channel music here. Ashen has some great music and sound fx, easily comparable to Gameboy Advance's best sound quality. We're talking an actual orchestra here! The monsters have actual vocal cords and you can always hear when they're near, and you can even tell when they're coming as their voices grow louder. The N-gage also has some great intro and in-between movie sequences that make use of some decent flash animation. If only the N-gage screen were bigger, this game would be the best N-gage game to date. But really, I don't mean that. About the screen, that is. The screen is very tolerable. It's size suits this game just fine.

But, yeah, this game was (and is still) very enjoyable. You're on a mission to find a lost family member and you're always presented with certain objectives (follow the blood trail, find the switch for the gate, get to the roof, etc.). The number pad is set up perfectly for the game. The 4 and 6 buttons make it easy to strafe left and right, the 1 key is always right by your thumb to switch to "ghost goggles" for seeing invisible enemies, weapon select buttons 8 and 9 are below the action buttons so you don't accidentally press them. The 0 button lets you see the current objectives you have to complete, and making turns with the control pad using the strafe buttons feels wonderful. I found it incredibly easy to fall right into this game after learning the controls for only a few minutes. The graphics are very ahead of what we saw in Red Faction. The walls, ground, and buildings are much more detailed, and there are noticable graphical breakthroughs for N-gage like shadowing, lighting effects, different contrasts and hues, and everything looks much more lifelike than things did in Red Faction. And the enemies are also very detailed and move like hell itself! The N-gage was even able to manage some pixelated guts flying off each jerk that you take down!

The multiplayer modes I've yet to play, but they've got to be awesome! Up to 4 players can play against each other in Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch game modes. The N-gage Arena features were a little dissapointing. I thought N-gage was going to actually support online multiplayer, but I guess that's a little premature. Instead, you can link to the Arena to upload your hi-scores and see who comes out on top as the best in the country and world. Sounds kinda cute, but I don't plan to ever go on N-gage Arena with Ashen. I want some online gaming, not a bunch of lame score swapping! ;)

But get Ashen as soon as possible. It's a great game with some really decent gameplay. It's graphics have me really excited about Ghost Recon. Really excited! I didn't think N-gage was going to be capable of this. Great game!