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By Alfred Hermida Technology editor, BBC News website Taking the popular TV show, 24, and squeezing it into a mobile phone game sounds like a daunting task. But as with so many big names from the world of TV and film, this is exactly what has happened to the real-time action series. 24 is making the leap from being a TV show to a game franchise of its own. Game versions for the main consoles are on their way. But fans of the show can already get a taste of the action on their mobile phones, with the release of the 24 game for handsets. Developed by Scottish mobile gaming company I-Play in just 15 weeks, the game is designed to provide people with a chance to experience the world of 24 via their handsets. Does it w**k? Well, yes and no. Short missions The mobile game is wrapped in the look and feel of 24. It includes the signature digital clock countdown and all the main actors lend their likeness to it. Rather than create a something that lets players take on the role of Jack Bauer, the game puts you in charge of Jack, as well as of several other leading characters. Unfortunately you do not get to hear them barking out information. Instead, text on screen keeps the player apprised of the latest twists in a plot involving a terrorist threat from North Korea. 24: THE MOBILE GAME Format: Mobile Graphics: 5 Sound: 6 Gameplay: 6 Enduring appeal: 5 Overall: 6 In trying to recreate the feel of 24, the mobile game is made up of short missions that need to be completed with a number of minutes. This proves to be a successful marriage of TV and gaming, as casual games like these w**k best on mobiles. The game also tries to provide an incentive to complete missions as quickly as possible, as it keeps an ongoing score of how well players are doing. The aim is simply to complete everything as in as little time as possible and this technique is effectively in creating an atmosphere of tension. Games on handsets w**k best when they offer short spurts of fun. And 24 is essentially a collection of generic mini-games, from puzzles to driving to code-breaking, designed to be played by just using one hand. As is often the case with collections of mini-games, some w**k better than others. Generic gaming There is a driving game pops up when an agent needs to get from A to B. In the early stages of the game, this can be embarrassingly easy. Later on, the driving gets tougher but ends up feeling like a tiresome interlude between more compelling missions. Other mini-games such as a puzzle game with coloured symbols are more compelling, forcing players to think two steps ahead. Infiltration missions offer a taste of stealth and the basic 2D graphics w**k well enough. But do not expect anything on the level of a Splinter Cell. 24 offers a good collection of games that w**k well on the small screen, with fairly basic graphics. Overall, though, the mini-games lack originality and could have been branded with the wrappings of other action blockbuster franchises, such as Mission Impossible. Alfred.Hermida-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk Story from BBC NEWS: |
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| Game aims to recreate 24 TV drama By Alfred Hermida Technology editor, BBC News website The hallmark of a Hollywood action movie is tends to be how many explosions can be packed into 90 minutes of celluloid action. But those big bangs cost big bucks, so scriptwriters often have to scale back their ambitions. However, explosions come cheap in the virtual world, as Duppy Demetrius found out when writing the story for the game of the hit US drama, 24. As a writer on the TV show, he always had to think about the budget. But in a virtual world, he could ignore this. "The biggest difference is how much I'm able to blow up," Mr Demetrius told the BBC News website. "In the game we even go so far as to cause tremors that drop parts of Los Angeles to the ground. "This would never be possible in the show due to strict budget constraints." Back story 24 has enjoyed phenomenal success since real-time thriller about the war on terror hit the small screen five years ago. The biggest challenge, however, was to basically come up with the equivalent of an entire season of 24 at one time Duppy Demetrius The TV franchise is about to leap into the world of video games, with the release of 24: The Game for the PlayStation 2 on Friday. The video game aims to recreate the intense, race against time, world of Jack Bauer for a generation of gamers. The voices and likenesses of stars of the TV show, Kiefer Sutherland and Elisha Cuthbert among others, led an air of authenticity to the game. Firmly aim at fans of the series, the adventure is set between seasons two and three. It aims to fill in the gaps in the story such as how did Ms Cuthbert's character, Kim Bauer, start w**king at the Counter-Terrorism Unit. "When we were coming up with the concept of the game I thought it might be fun to answer some of these questions," said Mr Demetrius. "I came in with a wish-list of the most prominent questions and, as the story was being figured out, tried to incorporate as many answers as was possible." Gaming credentials Mr Demetrius became involved in the project three years ago, when Sony approached 24 makers Fox with the idea of making a game based on the show. The gaming experience of the show's executive producer was limited to Space Invaders and Pac Man. So instead the responsibility for the script fell on Mr Demetrius, who describes himself as "somewhat of a gamer." "When I tackled the script for 24: The Game, I really had no game in mind to influence me," he said. "The biggest challenge, however, was to basically come up with the equivalent of an entire season of 24 at one time. "While writing the show, we worry about only five or six episodes at a time, but with the game we needed to know what was going to happen for the entire game, all 24 hours of it." The game has been praised for its high production values that capture the essence of the TV show, down to the trademark digital clock countdown and multi-panel scenes. But reviewers have been less complementary about the gameplay aspects of the title, which was made by Sony's studio in Cambridge, UK. Alfred.Hermida-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk Story from BBC NEWS: |
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| Troubled times for mobile games By Tim Watson BBC Worldwide Classic games like Pac Man have enjoyed a resurgence on mobiles Game designers interested in making games for mobiles have been told that the industry is facing stagnation. The message was delivered by the organiser of the Game Developers Conference Mobile, Robert Tercek, at the start of the event in San Jose, US. In the US, consumption has flattened out with less than 4% of mobile phone users downloading games each month. In Europe, the average price of a title has fallen but costs to games developers and publishers are rising. Moreover, some mobile networks are planning to take a greater share of game revenue. Poor games The theme was picked up by Mitch Lasky, vice president of the mobile arm of games giant Electronic Arts (EA). In his keynote to the conference of game developers, he highlighted four enemies threatening the future of mobile games. Game makers talking about one-button gameplay He said there was a lack of clear rules governing the relationship between games publishers and developers. In addition, buying games from a mobile was often a difficult and arduous process for consumers. Mr Lasky also hit out at the quality of mobiles games, saying there were too just many poor games available. Some operators, for example, offered almost 300 games to buy and download. Furthermore, many of these games were solitary experiences, rather than bringing people together via their mobiles. Throughout the conference there was an acceptance that mobile games had to w**k well on phones, and not be pale imitations of console games. There was also a realisation that operators were becoming pickier about the quality of new games that they were prepared to add to their services. Plethora of handsets A buzz phrase that echoed during the sessions was "one-button gameplay". This is the idea being that good games can be created that only require the player to use a single button. There were a good number of high performance 3D games on show in San Jose. The graphic quality of these is improving as handset manufacturers aim to produce phones with screen resolutions comparable to the PlayStation One. But the proliferation of handsets means that games publishers and developers are under pressure to make games that w**k on almost 100 different phones with different technical specifications. This is a major obstacle, as mobiles differ in features like memory, screen size and resolution, as well as processors and programming language. For a global release across a hundred different networks, a single game can easily exist in as many as 2500 different versions. |