Ashen

Pause for a minute and picture a phone keypad.  Now imagine this: press 5 to shoot, press 4 and 6 to strafe.  Not too bad, right?  Then throw in the up and down view change buttons: 2 and 3.  Then add the jump button: 7.  Now give us two buttons to change our weapons: 8 and 9.  If this sounds cluttered and confusing, don't question your ability to understand a sentence the first time you read it.  The controls are very confusing.  The jump, fire and camera change buttons are the most important.  This creates a diagonal control situation, something gamers aren't used to.  Something that gamers might not want to get used to.

I'm not one to give up easy though.  It's not easy to stick out a bad control scheme, but if you do, you'll eventually find yourself in one of two places: (1) you'll wish you could get back the hours you spent playing the game, or (2) you'll be glad you kept pressing forward, regardless of the confusion.

This game is a rarity.  Ashen falls into category #2, the one that makes me glad I didn't burn the game to ashes. 

Ashen's missions are not out of the ordinary.  Switches need to be pulled, enemies need to be killed.  The game scraps the need for a switch button by activating those switches automatically.  Just walk up and touch it.  The game will handle the rest.

For most part the experience is a fast-paced one.  Monsters are big and come at you quickly – a nice scenario for gamers who like to run and shoot.  The levels are interesting with many large buildings to pass through in the city, numerous tunnels to explore, and elevators to ride up and down the dangerous floors.  You never know what lurks inside.  It could be something Doom-like, or it could be an alien creature that looks like a cross between two of Will Smith's biggest movies: I, Robot and Independence Day.  And you never know how thick their skin is going to be until you shoot them.

Ammo is in short supply from the very first level, which is why Ashen provides you with a decent weapon that replenishes ammo on its own.  It takes time to charge, so if your power's low and enemy is after you, RUN!  But once the power returns, pull the trigger and tell the monsters to eat laser beam.

Besides that there's a pistol, a shotgun, a sniper rifle and a machine gun.  Sounds typical, right?  Then I guess we might as well toss in a gattling gun and the option to use two pistols simultaneously.  Sound good?  As unoriginal as this may be, can you really imagine a first-person shooter without these classic guns?  A futuristic FPS maybe, but one that's close to matching our world?  For a game like that you need weapons that look like they could have come from Earth.

One of the most striking things about Ashen is its polygonal effects.  They might seem dated by today's console standards, but look at it from a strictly mobile point of view and you'll realize just how impressive they are.  Besides having enormous landscapes, which are very well detailed, the game offers a fair amount of realism in the form of the weapons that the main character is holding.  The speed is pretty decent, only slowing when several characters are on the screen at once.  Was this avoidable?  It seems like it wasn't.  I don't think it's due to the N-Gage's lack of power (it should be powerful enough).  Three-dimensional acceleration is new to the mobile market, so I think it's more of a matter of programming optimization.

The most impressive thing of all though comes in the game's lighting.  I don't know if it's considered true real-time lighting, but the effect is convincing enough to fool anyone.  Shoot a powerful blast down a dark hallway and watch as the light realistically brightens the area.  The light quickly fades in a way that is very similar to the real-time lighting you're used to seeing.  In other mobile games you'd see the light just die out.  Or if it faded, it most likely didn't have the power to light the whole room.  It would be plagued by some cheesy effect.  With Ashen that is not the case.

Ashen is undeniably the best first-person shooter designed for the N-Gage.  It's an N-Gage exclusive, so you won't see it on PlayStation 2, nor will you see it on the PSP or Nintendo DS.  The only place to get it is N-Gage.  The graphics are sure to turn heads, and help the game gain second looks from anyone who wasn't previously interested in it.  The gameplay is good too, despite the fact that the controls are way below the less-than-perfect classification.

Not nearly enough N-Gage titles take advantage of the power that's available to developers.  That alone makes this game worth checking out.  The gameplay – now that makes it worth buying.

Gameplay: 8
3D first-person action on a teeny-tiny screen.  I longed for the day when such technology would become available, and now it's finally here.  Once you play Ashen you'll never want to go back to the dated first-person shooters designed for the "other" portable consoles out there.  Good levels, good enemies, and good graphics – all in one tiny package.

Graphics: 8.5
Have you ever seen a mobile game that looks this good before?  I certainly haven't, and I've played almost every game previously released for the N-Gage.  Nothing on it can compare to the lighting effects that this game has to offer.  The polygon buildings are also quite detailed, inside and out.

Sound: 6
Moderately tolerable.

Difficulty: Easy/Medium
After fumbling with the controls for a while, gamers will find that Ashen is not a very difficult game to master.

Concept: 7
Nothing new here.  On the upside, as old as the concepts presented here may be, there work well in this particular game.

Multiplayer: 7
You'll need four N-Gage units and four copies of the game to get the most out of this one.  Bluetooth is the only multiplayer option, meaning you must be within close proximity of your opponents.

Overall: 8
Get ready to free the world from alien scum.  At least they look like aliens – but are they?  I guess you'll have to play the game to find out.  I wasn't too intrigued by the story, but that hardly matters on the small screen.  Portable games of any kind need to be just one thing: fun to play.  Ashen passes that test with flying colors of real-time lighting and impressive polygons.