Nokia\'s new N-Gage was pimped all over the show, so even though I wasn\'t really interested in it, due to its $299 price tag, I decided to play a little during my booth appointment at THQ.
The first game I decided to try was Red Faction. Wow. To call that game Red Faction should perhaps be against the law. The graphics were on par with the original Castle Wolfenstein, and maybe a little worse. The framerate never got above 15 fps, and was probably closer to 10. The bad guys all looked the same and were generally about a quarter of an inch tall. It controlled terribly, and even though there are about 100 buttons to choose from on the "system" they just couldn\'t get it to feel good.
Then I took a look at a motorcycle game that was so bad, I didn\'t even look at the name of it. Incredible. It was so bad it was incredible. I don\'t think I saw anything other than a good sized bike, and the road. I saw no trees, no nothing. Maybe the guy sucked that was playing, but I never even saw another motorcycle.
Tony Hawk actually didn\'t look too bad, but again, the controls just aren\'t good. They tried to make the system feel good as a phone as well as a gaming system, and they failed at both. I can\'t tell you how big this thing looks next to the side of your head. It\'s downright embarassing.
So, yeah, I\'ve got nothing good to say about the N-Gage. You could buy a nice web-enabled phone, AND a GBA SP, and a game for the price of this thing. They\'re trying to make a big splash with big franchise names, but snazzy NES style games might be more what they should be looking at.