8 In 1 Is Not Always Great
Herocraft's slogan is "fun on the run", but apparently they forgot to share that vision with HiTech, the folks who ported their Arcade Park Vol. 1 & 2 to the PocketPC under the combined moniker of "Arcade Park".
My fondness for the games that each segment of Arcade Park are based off varies greatly, but overall I'd say they made pretty decent choices. However, the actual implementation of HiTech's translations leaves a lot to be desired. My biggest gripe throughout the review is that the control scheme was horrible. Specifically, double clicking the stylus was used in most games for some important action, while single clicking would move your character around. The problem was that when you double clicked it would still perform the single click action first, quite often throwing you out of line for whatever you were trying to do with the double click. The hardware buttons were not used at all, which was very disappointing.
There was a wide range in the quality of graphics between the games, which peaked at good and bottomed at "sprite pack". None of the games had exceptional graphics, and sadly a couple of the games that did have good visuals had little else to offer.
Audio did not fare much better than the visuals. For the most part the songs were decent, and a couple of them were even catchy, but then there were a couple where it appeared like they didn't finish the track, because the music would come and go. The sound effects were good on most games, but on a couple of them got annoying rather quickly.
Overall I found Arcade Park to be a disappointment. For a full review including final score, follow this link
- Login or Register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
On what Pocket PC model did you test it? The D-pad and, more importantly, the Action button works in all mini-games on all (except the WM5 hx4700, which the game is incompatible with - it just crashes at start) my test devices (iPAQ 2210; Axim x51v; HTC Wizard; PL720 - and, as far as the Palm OS is concerned, the T|3 (yes, another game better played on the Palm because of the higher resolution - when will Pocket PC game developers finally use VGA?)). (I've only tested the trial version - the commercial/full one may be different.) I'm pretty sure yours is an incompatible model. Also, Allen doesn't mention any compatibility problems either in his review ( http://www.smartphonemag.com/newsl_TWIG/TWIG_158_05-05-06.htm ) - his Action button worked too.
IMHO, for the (very low) price, this game is of good value - but, again, it worked OK on (almost) all my Pocket PC's and I had no problems with the Action hardware button.
I have a Dell Axim X5 running WM2003. I guess I'll have to give it a try again, because that would make a big difference in my opinion of several of those games. Every time I tried to hit one of the buttons, however, I would either get the game's menu or nothing.
Also give a try to the jog dial "center", which also has Action functionality.
Okay, I made sure the D-Pad "center" was enabled for "enter" clicks, and went back and tried all of the games. As it turns out, Gold Hunter actually uses the buttons on either side of the D-Pad for digging. However, none of the other games used any of the four hardware buttons for anything except pulling up the menu. As for the D-Pad center button, it did act as the action key, but then moving with the D-Pad and firing with the center button didn't act much better than moving with the stylus and double clicking to fire.
I did look through their website and the listing on ClickGamer and saw no mention either place of any compatibility issues. I have sent them an email, so we'll see what they come back and say.
I gotta say, I am a bit baffled by the wonderful reception of Arcade Park. It's by no means awful, but I had had enough after 3 minutes of the demo.
Well, opinions certainly differ - some people find, for example, Namco's old Pocket PC arcade ports excellent, which, IMHO, are pretty bad (much worse than any other, say, Galaxians port out there).