Posts Tagged ‘ Gameloft ’

Asphalt 6: Adrenaline is out of the shop and it’s firing on all cylinders

by Dave Loft

I had quite a few problems with Asphalt 6 when it first came out as I mentioned in my previous post. To summarize, it was too big at 1GB, took too much RAM at over 100MB, it had framerate issues, stability issues, control issues and achievements were not saved. To say the least, it was a complete mess. I had planned to write a review when it came out but instead I just ranted about how poorly done the Android port was.

Well here we are five weeks and two patches later and Gameloft has addressed all of my issues. It now uses less storage at just under 900MB and limits the download to 500MB compressed. It’s now down to 70MB of RAM, the framerate has improved, stability is great, control issues are gone and achievements are working. It is now in a state that I would consider release worthy and I am now going to give it a proper run through.

First and foremost it really is a great game and is easily the best Arcade Racer on Android. The physics on the cars feel a little off and fairly floaty but after a few hours with the game, that issue kind of fades away. Drifting is an absolute blast, once you get the rhythm down. Accelerometer steering is precise and feels just right and for anyone who prefers alternative methods of steering, you will be happy to see a few alternative options available.

The graphics are good, but look somewhat grainy, like it’s not taking advantage of the high res display on my phone. But then on some tracks this isn’t an issue at all. It appears to be the detailed textures used on some levels that have the issue and utilizing anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering would clear it up. Making up for the texture issues are the beautifully rendered cars, lush scenery, great filtering and weather effects. All of which come together to create a great visual presentation.

The game offers a number of ways to play. With Free Race you will be given an option of four modes; Normal Race, Beat ’em All, Elimination and Collector. Beat ’em All requires that you knock out a set number of opponents. Just smash your car against theirs and push them into the edge of the track will usually do the trick and is followed by a pleasing slow motion ‘Elimination’ animation. Get used to taking out racers this way as you will need to take out a few racers in each race to rank higher. In Elimination, races the last racer will be eliminated every 30 seconds till there is just three left. With Collector your goal is to collect the most special items and to win, you will need to get out first quickly. In Career you will have four additional modes; Dual, Time Attack, Drift and Under Pressure. Under Pressure is just like Beat ’em All, except that you have limited respawns.

The game has 42 cars ranging from the Mini Cooper to the Bugatti Veyron, all of which can be customized with paint jobs, decals and performance enhancing parts.  The game provides 11 leagues, 55 events and 12 courses to sharpen your skills on. Then when your ready you can take them online and race with up to six people, locally or over the internet. This game does not disappoint in the value for dollar catagory.

This has been my go to game for the past week whenever I have had time to sink my teeth into it. It’s not the game I pickup when I have a couple minutes while waiting, as it takes too long to load into the game and get racing. But like many Gameloft games, it is the game I go to when I’m looking for a console like experience. The depth of gameplay is beyond most smartphone games and easily provides the same amount of content of a game ten times it’s price. If you like arcade racing games, then Asphalt 6 is a must buy.

Score: 9.0

Official Website: Gameloft.com

For those interested, the game is only for high end phones and must be purchased from Gameloft directly. Games can be paid with credit card or PayPal and with some carriers, carrier billing is an option. Any game purchased can be easily re-downloaded by heading to gameloft.com on your phone and selecting ‘My Downloads’ at the bottom of the page. Login with your email or phone number and any game purchased available for that model will appear. Gameloft games will occasionally check for updates when launched and download them automatically if needed. 

email:  android.support@gameloft.com
phone: 1-800-910-3186

2011
04/28
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Mobile
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Dungeon Hunter 2 Spells a Winner

by Dave Loft

The sequel to Dungeon Hunter was recently made available for Android and it’s improved over the original in every way. I enjoyed Dungeon Hunter but I stopped playing after a couple hours. Dungeon Hunter 2 has sucked me into several hours of compelling gameplay and has shown me no sign of letting go.

When the game starts you have your choice of three classes; warrior, rogue and mage. Once you get going you will have a further options to customize with one of two specializations and dozens of skills. The game is easy to use, which really goes a long way to making it accessible. The menu and character customization screens are easy to navigate, which is often an issue with RPG’s.

The controls feel much better than the first, especially with the 3 spell buttons being separated which makes them much easier to hit in the middle of action. The only issue I had with control was often getting stuck on objects around the world.

One of the big benefits of the game is in it’s save game simplicity. Since your game save is done automatically. If you have to quit and take care of something more important, your right where you left off when your ready to resume. Which is essential for an RPG on a mobile phone.

For anyone familiar with the first game, you’ll be impressed to know that Dungeon Hunter 2 is five times the size of the first. The variety of levels and enemies are also more diverse, keeping things from getting boring. Dungeon Hunter 2 has a total of 14 Acts and a maximum character ranking of 100. My character was only at level 25 by the time I hit Act 9. So if you find it too difficult, just grind away till you rank up a few levels before taking on that hard to beat story mission. It’s surprising how quickly those earlier challenging enemies become a cakewalk.

The graphics in Dungeon Hunter 2 have improved greatly since the first one. The textures are crisp, the animation is smooth and the lighting effects are impressive. The framerate has dropped a bit from the first game but considering the style of gameplay, it’s not much of a hindrance.

My biggest issue comes down to the dialogue and character interaction. There are no voice actors at work here, so expect lots of reading. Considering the sheer amount of dialogue and the tradition of RPG’s to not use voice acting, it’s not surprising. But it would have been nice to have more camera angles and character animation during this interactions. It may be nit picky but it does leave the world feeling quite static.

It’s great to see them add online and local co op play allowing you to take your character online or off at whim. It’s a great experience when played with someone you know. But you will want them to be beside you when you play so you can coordinate better. Playing online and having no way to communicate with one another takes away from the experience and just makes it more difficult. I would love to see some voice chat capability, this is a phone after all. But it’s hard to fault the game for something that no mobile game has implemented thus far.

This is a traditional Action\RPG through and through and doesn’t make any changes to that tried and true formula. It really is just Diablo II for Android and ultimately it doesn’t get much better than that.

Score: 9.5

Official Website: Gameloft.com

For those interested, the game is only for high end of phones and must be purchased from Gameloft directly. Games can be paid with credit card or PayPal and with some carriers, carrier billing is an option. Any game purchased can be easily re-downloaded by heading to gameloft.com on your phone and selecting ‘My Downloads’ at the bottom of the page. Login with your email or phone number and any game purchased available for that model will appear. Dungeon Hunter 2 will occasionally check for updates when launched and download them automatically if needed. 

email:  android.support@gameloft.com
phone: 1-800-910-3186


2011
04/14
CATEGORY
Gaming
Mobile
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Nova 2 is landing on Android soon

So every now and then I check out Gameloft’s site to see if any new games have been made available. Last night I noticed they added Nova 2 to the list of games available to Android with a release date of April 2011. Unfortunately as of the time of writing this the buy now button does nothing. I tried going to Gameloft.com on my phone but the game is not even listed.

It appears this is yet another confirmation in a string of confirmations going as far back as December that Nova 2 is coming to Android. According to what I read at the beginning of April the game is supposed to be exclusive to the Sony Xperia Play for the first month. So we shouldn’t be seeing it for other Android handsets till May. But my experience with Gameloft is that if they are making reference to the game on their site it’s a good chance we will be seeing it by the end of the week.

Keep checking the link below to see when it becomes available.

http://en.gameloft.ca/download-games/android-games/

Product Page
http://en.gameloft.ca/android-games/nova-2-android/?adid=117277

2011
04/12
CATEGORY
Gaming
Mobile
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Asphalt 6: Adrenaline sputters onto Android

by Dave Loft

I have been keeping an eye on a couple arcade racers on iOS and have been waiting for an Android port. The two games I have been looking forward to are Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Asphalt 6 Adrenaline and the latter was the first to hit Android. My current favorite arcade racer on Android is the games prequel, Asphalt 5. So I was very happy to see Asphalt listed on Gameloft’s site ready to buy for compatible Android devices. Unfortunately this game was pulled from the oven a bit too early and has a few major issues that need fixing before I can recommend this game.

The first issue is the storage requirements. While the game only takes 18MB of internal storage it requires 900MB of the SD card and over 100MB of free RAM to run. Larger games are where were heading but close to a GB just for a phone game will turn many people off. The other issue seems to steam from its heavy use of RAM. The put it bluntly, the game can’t handle multitasking. So if you get a phone call, text or email and stop mid game to answer one of those you may find your game auto closed by the time your ready to play again. If it hasn’t forced closed, it’s very likely to have graphics glitches once loaded back in. In my first race back from answering a text I noticed I could see through the cars and the roads textures. I can tell you seeing buildings and other items through the road is very disorienting.

The other major issue seems to be completely random. Sometimes when I load the game the controls don’t work. When I start a race the car just veers to the right as soon as it starts. There is no way to fix this other than changing control scheme from tilt controls or quiting the game. I’ve loaded the game a few times without issue then it comes back again and it’s very frustrating. An issue is made worse by the inevitable long load times.

The other minor issue I have with the game is the not so stellar frame rate. I’m getting around 30fps which is more than playable but is noticeable and not as enjoyable as Need for Speed Shift and Asphalt 5’s super smooth 60fps. Considering my Galaxy S has one of the fastest GPU’s on a phone I can’t see this game running well at all on any other model.

I do expect Gameloft to continually update the game and will eventually fix all the issues. Asphalt 5 was a little slow and had some issues when it first came out and it works perfectly now. Within the next month or so I will do a review of the game and hopefully by then it will have at least most of the issues I mentioned ironed out. If not it’s back to waiting for Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.

*Update* Asphalt 6 has been updated and it fixes just about everything I had issues with. Hit the link the check out my review.

2011
03/18
CATEGORY
Gaming
Mobile
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Gameloft has new games coming to Android

The New Games

Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus
This was tweeted by Gameloft almost a week ago so it is guaranteed to be coming. When looking at Gameloft’s previous release cycle, I believe this game will be available Friday.
http://www.gameloft.com/android-games/modern-combat-2-black-pegasus/
* Update*  Modern Combat 2 is now available (1.28.2011)


Guitar Rock Tour 2
Not announced but it did show up on Gameloft Live in early January. Gameloft also has a finished page on their site basically confirming the game without say a word.
http://www.gameloft.com/android-games/guitar-rock-tour-2/

Real Golf 2011
Just like Guitar Rock this game showed up on Gameloft Live and has a finished page from Gameloft.com. While there has been no mention from Gameloft, the completeness of their sites say sooner rather than later. http://www.gameloft.com/android-games/real-golf-2011/

Asphalt 6: Adrenaline
First the game was mentioned by Gameloft on Twitter in December. Then it showed up at CES on an Acer Tablet. Then I find it’s website confirming it is coming, but it most likely won’t be soon.
http://en.gameloft.ca/android-games/asphalt_6_adrenaline_hd/
* Update*  Asphalt 6 is now available (3.15.2011)

NOVA 2
NOVA 2 was mentioned and confirmed back in December on Twitter. With the games website not only lacks images and videos, but also copy and seeing as the game just hit iPhone. I suspect it will be quite a while before we see it hit Android. http://en.gameloft.ca/android-games/nova-2-android/
* Update*  NOVA 2 is now available but only for the Xperia Play (4.18.2011)
* Update*  NOVA 2 is now available to other high end Android devices (5.06.2011)

On An Interesting Note

In the past six weeks Gameloft has released 10 new games on Android. Their current lineup of games is now 22 titles deep. Far beyond any other publisher on Android. If they can turn the community around and get them used to the idea of buying their games from Gameloft.com they have the opportunity to capture the market ahead of juggernauts like EA and Activsion.

Gangstar: Miami Vindication, the last of those ten games was released last Friday. The game has great potential with it’s GTA style game-play and fantastic visuals. Unfortunately the inconsistent audio and especially the random slowdowns takes away from the game quite a bit. Hopefully an update will be released to fix this. I shot some video of it when I got it to show what it’s like.

For a preview of their then new games announced in December hit the following link.

Related post Gameloft releases Spider-man for Android

Dave Loft

2011
01/19
CATEGORY
Gaming
Mobile
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EA is having issues with Need For Speed Shift on the Android Market …and it has nothing to do with Fragmentation

I think many people are making the wrong assumption in view of all the complaints over NFS Shift. Many have used the term fragmentation, claiming it’s just too difficult for developers to handle all the different handsets. But the difficulties of NFS Shift do not a result from the difficulty of developing for Android. It is simply a mistake made by EA in releasing a bad update to the game. To make matters worse it occurred just a day before putting the game on sale in a market, a market with it’s new 15 minute return policy. It’s definitely an issue that needs to be sorted out  but blaming it on fragmentation does no one any good.

Here’s how the story really goes. I bought Need for Speed Shift a week ago and it worked great, it worked great for almost everybody. I had been using a leaked copy since August as EA chose not to make it available and instead make a lucrative deal with Verizon for 4 months of exclusive access. The game had worked great since that day and the day they released it on the market, I bought it. The game hadn’t changed in 4 months and worked just as well as it did before. There were man happy people giving the game great reviews, with only a few complaints. Then about a week later, just a day before the $0.99 sale they released an update to the game. That update caused the game to no longer with many devices including my Samsung Galaxy S.

The real issue here is that they put out an update without properly testing it. Then it went on sale and  with ten times as many people buying the defective game got the issue noticed. An issue that might not have been as controversial had it not been for the new 15 minute return policy. It prevented many of these people from being able to return the defective game.

What this issue really brings to light is the Android market. The new 15 minute return policy is a reaction to complaints from developers but they reacted to far.  I understand 24 hours is too long especially when considering games. I beat Ultimate Spiderman: Total Mayhem in a day and if it was in the market I could have returned it easily within 24 hours. But now we see the other side of the coin and the issue that comes with too short of a return policy. I think the writing is on the wall and the people want a more reasonable 1 hour return policy which should be fair enough for both sides to agree on.

Another issue with the market is the issue of fraudulent games that can easily be sold on the market.  Right now there are two copies of NFS Shift available on the market (at least in Canada). The original one I bought is from EA Mobile. The second one which popped up recently is from Electronic Arts Mobile. I think it’s fairly unlikely EA is using two accounts to release the same game. I think the most likely explanation is that Electronic Arts is a fraudulent company selling the leaked version of NFS. It’s a smart time to try a scam like this as they’re less likely to get noticed by EA over Christmas. This other company selling a possibly a pirated version of the game could be causing even more issues and confusion in the market. It helps you understand why Gameloft wants to take its own approach to selling games.

That about wraps up what I think is going here. What do you think?

While I wait for EA to fix their game I paid $5 for last week, I’m heading back to the leaked version I got in August.

Dave Loft

2010
12/23
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Gameloft releases Ultimate Spiderman: Total Mayhem for Android

So I woke up this morning to a great surprise, Ultimate Spiderman is now available for Android. Gameloft has been on a real Android kick lately and this is their 4th game in the past couple weeks. First was Let’s Golf 2, then Brothers in Arms 2 and Fishing Kings before releasing probably their best game yet Spiderman.

I know many people have a hatred towards Gameloft for not supporting the Android Market. But their own store experience has steadily improved over the past couple months and is now a completely pain free experience. Just stay away from buying games on their desktop site and stick to the phone. The other great news is the pricing, at $5 these games are a great buy. But right now all games are going for $2.50 Canadian which is a steal for the depth and quality that they games provide. As it stands Gameloft has the majority of the games going on my best of 2010 Android games list so don’t let the lack of Android market compatibility keep you from the best collection of 3D games on the platform.

Spiderman is very polished with a great presentation, graphics sound effects and voice overs. The combat is quick and intense and if you have ever played Batman Arkham Asylum you will be right at home. The touch screen controls are extremely well done and I never felt like the lack of physical controls held me back. The only blemish on an almost perfect package would be the camera. For the most part it does a great job keeping what you need to see on the screen. But occasionally it was positioned oddly making it difficult to move into the next room. If you were to only buy one game, this is the game you should get.

I shot of a video of the opening cinematic as well as some gameplay. Excuse the bad gaming skills as I had one hand holding the camera and the game really requires two to play well. I also have a video I shot while inside one of Gameloft games showing their Gameloft Live service. When I clicked on the games tab it showed me a few games not yet available on Android but should be coming soon. A day after shooting the video Fishing Kings HD came out and mention of GT Racing: Motor Academy on their desktop website means the others are not far behind.

I was also talking to a rep at Gameloft who could not give any release data but said N.O.V.A. 2 will be hitting Android very soon. My guess is December 24th which is the last day of Advent Calender and Gameloft has promised a big surprise for us. The only thing else that could be better is bringing their library to the Android Market. Time will tell I guess. Happy gaming.

Dave Loft

2010
12/17
CATEGORY
Gaming
Mobile
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Gameloft’s new DRM explained

So I got an email from Dumitru at Gameloft in regards to their new DRM. His first email sent me the download links to games I had purchased including instructions to remove any trace of the previous installation. He mentioned that the new DRM was a great improvement but unfortunately didn’t go into specifics.

I emailed him regarding the specifics on the DRM used and I received his reply yesterday. I had asked him what would happen if I gave my wife my Nexus One and I got the Samsung Galaxy S for myself. He explained that each copy of the game has a unique ID which is sent to Gameloft’s servers and is tied to a specific device. Since the user account doesn’t matter technically my wife could use the games after the switch but I could not.

On the plus side he said in case I want to run the game on another phone, he would send me a new link to download. As soon as I was sent the APK files I installed, than removed and tested the ability to reinstall. It all worked perfectly without issue and it’s definitely a requirement. I have Froyo which adds the ability to move apps to the SD card but over 90% of the apps I use do not support it and that includes Gameloft’s games.

The only thing they haven’t implemented is a way to get users updated versions of the games. If they could accomplish this they will have addressed the majority of peoples concerns. I understand that some of you will never consider buying anything from Gameloft if it isn’t sold through the Market. But I see no reason to deny oneself the breadth of gaming they’re providing simply over the delivery method of choice. It is good to see Gameloft improving their service to meet the needs of the their customers, it truly is a rare thing these days.

Buy games from Gameloft

Dave Loft

2010
07/08
CATEGORY
Digital
Gaming
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Gameloft Changes their Policy



I got an email the other day from Gameloft and they seem to have changed their mind on the single download policy. Here it is in their own words.

“Hello Dave


We’d like to announce you that policy regarding Android HD+ games sold through our own store is currently changed to allow you to re-download a game that you paid for.

Unfortunately this change will take a bit of time but rest assured we will announce once it is live.

Thank you for your patience.

Take care,
——————————-
Dumitru Niculescu
Customer Care Manager
http://www.gameloft.com/
——————————-”

If this comes true than I will change my mind and give their service a recommendation. I would prefer their games be made available on the Android Market. But if this is the only downside, it’s a downside I can live with.

Dave Loft

2010
05/31
CATEGORY
Digital
Gaming
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17 comments

Do Not Buy Anything From Gameloft *Update*

I’ve been tipped off to a method on how to reinstall the game. Just install with the phone in airplane mode. Do this where you have WiFi, but make sure you have WiFi disabled at first. If the game needs any files allow the game to enable WiFi and it’ll download what it needs to finish the install. Once its done your good to go. Enjoy!

Dave Loft

2010
05/26
CATEGORY
Digital
Gaming
Mobile
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6 comments