ASHEN

Ashen is essentially a first person shooter in the same style as the old Dooms and Wolfenstein series and you can't help but harken back to these classics since the similarities to Ashen are apparent from when you first begin your quest in the game. The story is simple enough, Seven River City is over run with 'creatures' and you (playing as Jacob Ward) have gone there to search for your sister Vanessa, who it appears is in a spot of bother, I wont give the story away, you'll have to play it for yourselves.

Controls are a little confined, particularly I would imagine, if you had larger hands than I since it makes use of much of the keypad, with the main movement done using the directional pad. All in all I didn't find this a problem, once I had gotten used to the button placement but had this title needed pinpoint accuracy to eradicate your foe I imagine this would be frustrating, thankfully targeting within Ashen is well put together and fairly forgiving with the player only needing to come close when firing at enemies… whew.

Graphically speaking Ashen isn't too bad, it even has some nice surprises. Although pixelated at points it does a wonderful job given the machines capabilities and it even manages some sweet lighting effects (lighting effects? On a phone Game?!), yes I said lighting effects. Maps are interesting and although I'm not sure of the overall polygon count I'd say it's pretty good for a mobile game.

Sound is atmospheric and clear and only fails due to repetativeness. Cartridges clink off stone floors, pistols sound like high powered pistols, monsters grunt and groan.. all this on a mobile platform.. bloody nora!

Gameplay is fun and although the story is nothing new it does make you want to continue. It's an above average FPS that you can take anywhere with you, what more could you want? It also has a nice selection of weaponry, I found the dual pistols to be highly useful in dispatching foes. Sadly multiple foes mean framerate problems, ok perhaps that's a little harsh but I did notice definite slowdown when multiple targets were on screen.

Multiplayer is as yet un reviewed since sadly I only have one copy of the game, should this change in future I will most definitely update this review and let you all know how deathmatch is on Ashen.

Female Gamer Angle is the usual problem, you play a male hero saving the female and there's no choice involved I'm afraid.

Overall I found Ashen to be a fun title with a surprising amount of cool. My only real complaints of Ashen would be I could only play it in small bursts because for whatever bizarre reason I suffered from severe motion sickness, but of course this may well be a personal flaw on my part. And a chuggy framerate when multiple characters on screen also loses it kudos, all up though it's a great title that any FPS fan who owns an N-Gage should not be without.