the mobile phone and gaming magazine www.phonicamagazine.co.uk
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phonica magazine uk
WHAT’S INSIDE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 13 2010
REVIEWS
NEWS Ovi Maps makes summer travel easier Conspiracy for Good launched O2 shows its commitment to end child poverty ASA rules on Orange’s Adver sing Campaign Golden Eye in 2010? Eve: Tyrannis expansion released UK games industry denied special tax status Upcoming MMO Guild Wars 2
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PREVIEWS Gears of War 3 Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Halo: Reach
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Dell Streak Samsung Galaxy S Nokia 7230 Red Dead: Redemp on Super Street Fighter IV Blur Split/Second: Velocity Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies Metro 2033 Lost Planet 2 Resonance of Fate Nier Dead to Rights: Retribu on Prison Break: The Conspiracy
COMPETITION
FEATURES
Win a copy of Red Dead: Redemp on
GAMING ARCADES: RELICS OF THE PAST? Mecca or a live museum?
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PACMAN AT 30 Has it really been 30 years since the yellow one first started munching?
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FORGOTTEN GEMS: MEANS ARENA Smart and involving puzzler? Naff Amiga tle? Who cares, it was hugely funny!
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THE GUIDE Games: Phonica’s 20 Recommended Coin Pinchers
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Mobile Phones
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EDITOR IN CHIEF Kevin Leonce
GAMING EDITOR Sco Tierney
CONTRIBUTORS Rob Hobson Ian Duncan Paul Park
CREATIVE SERVICES & DESIGN Sco Tierney www.sco - erney.com
EDITORIAL editorial@phonicamagazine.co.uk
ENQUIRIES info@phonicamagazine.co.uk
ADVERTISING adver sing@phonicamagazine.co.uk
WWW.PHONICAMAGAZINE.CO.UK Become a Fan of Phonica Magazine UK on Facebook & Twi er Phonica Magazine Š All material in this publica on is covered by copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publica on may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmi ed in any form electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, in whole or part without wri en permission of the publisher or the copyright owner. Please note that whilst every care has been taken to ensure that all the data in this publica on is accurate at the me of going to print, the publisher cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, whether caused by negligence or otherwise, or for any loss, however caused, occasioned to any person by reliance on it; and hereby disclaims any liability for it. Opera ons and some features are network dependent; please refer to your network provider for full details.
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EDITOR’S LETTER WAKA WAKA PHONICA MAGAZINE UK! Thanks for ge ng another great issue of the mobile phone and gaming magazine. So for many it’s been a scary and different World Cup….No England, no Brazil….who’s next? It did get me thinking about how things are changing. We now have phone/tablet devices like the Dell Streak (with Apple rumoured to be heading in that direc on with upgrades to the iPad) and the near ex nc on of arcades across the UK. The la er really struck home, as I dis nctly remember ge ng a whopping for skipping a er school lessons for a nice 45 minute session at the nearest arcade. Is change good? Will we miss the things we once revered? Take a break from crying for an early exit by our foo e team and... Enjoy reading Your Editor in Chief
Kevin Leonce
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REVIEWS NOKIA 7230 CUTE AND JOLLY...IS THIS WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR? Buying a phone these days is a very expensive business. If you want something that has all the features and gimmicks that you require for your daily life, then it’s likely your bank account is going to have a £400 hole chomped out of it. You’ll get a top-notch phone for your cash, but we can’t all afford to throw around that amount of money every me the latest mobile upstages the rest. So, those cheap phones that merrily glow with their star-shaped bargain s ckers are a very temp ng and financially lucra ve op on, and this new bargain, the Nokia 7230, looks to be a very temp ng buy indeed. The Nokia 7230 is a cheap and cheerful slider, which gives you what you need and ignores what you don’t. All the basics are covered, with a dy 3.2MP camera, Bluetooth, 3G, solid music playback, FM radio and a respec ul 395 hours or ba ery life. All this is packaged in a curvy and amusing body, which looks slender in black and silly in pink. As expected, the 7230 is extremely easy to use, thanks to a simple yet effec ve interface that has been honed and toned by Nokia through years of prac ce. It’s nothing to get overly excited about, and to be fair we’d rather finger the iPhone’s or HTC’s interface than this, but it’s more than useable, especially for a standard mobile. As with any budget phone, there are going to be some rather heavy drawbacks. Firstly, the camera is very poor when used in moderate to low light, and due to a lack of flash, there’s not a lot you can do to combat this shor all. Also, the audio output is of a very low standard. OK, this is a budget phone, but audio quality is a feature that should not be affected by this. Good speaker quality is the bread and bu er of the mobile at the end of the day.
Another flaw that crops-up is the lack of HSDPA support, and also the exclusion of Wi-Fi.Although Wi-Fi is a general inclusion for the vast majority of phones, it’s s ll an expensive luxury. That said, with the price for the 7230 being set at around the £100 mark, Wi-Fi should be included. Sending emails is also an excrucia ng task.
“WHEN YOU COME TO BUY YOUR NEXT PHONE, YOU MAY CONSIDER THE NOKIA 7230 AS AN OPTION, BUT YOU’LL PROBABLY FIND THAT THE 7230 JUST DOESN’T OFFER EITHER TOP QUALITY OR A BARGAIN PRICE TAG.” Overall the Nokia 7230 is a bit of a let down, and not up to the standard that we’ve come to expect from any trusty budget phone. It’s got some great features, it’s sturdy and we love the design, but we’ve come to a point in me when the exclusions and standard that the Nokia 7230 has to offer is no longer acceptable for a budget handset. £100 is s ll a lot of money for a mobile phone, and if you just want a phone that makes calls and does the most basic of basic du es, why not get a £9.99 handset from ASDA? The Nokia 7230 just doesn’t quite seem to fit, as it’s a bit too pricy for a cheap buy, but not good enough to match-up to the pricier mobiles. When you come to buy your next phone, you may consider the Nokia 7230 as an op on, and to be honest you could do a lot worse, but you’ll probably find that the 7230 just doesn’t offer either top quality or a bargain price tag, and for that reason we can’t overly recommend it. Sco Tierney
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REVIEWS
BLUR PUBLISHER: ACTIVISION DEVELOPER: BIZARRE CREATIONS PLATFORM: XBOX 360, PS3, PC AVAILABLE: NOW
MARIO KART FOR THE GROWN-UPS? Take Mario Kart 64. Modernise. Add hot graphics. A touch of class. Result? A fantas cally exci ng, edgeof-the-seat racing ac on with weapons and abili es thrown in for good measure – Mario Kart v2.0. Very few games have encompassed mul player ac on from across the board in terms of ac on, progressive gameplay and the raw thrill of blowing your friends away, and in Blur we may see one of these rare beasts. Blur, to put it in a very simple manner, brings together the best of the prim and proper racing games - such as the Project Gotham series and the Need for Speed series - included some of the awesome graphics on show, and tossed it to Crazy Ivan from Red Alert to mess about with.
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As expected, the graphics, the handling of the cars, the racing itself is pre y much spot on; you get what you expected, nothing le out, and it’s a good ride by itself. Dri ing, blas ng down straights, hi ng curves like a baseball pitcher – it’d be a passable imita on of any of the aforemen oned games by itself. Given that there is a very similar rewards system like the Kudos feature in Project Gotham Racing, with also a similar singleplayer campaign involving various differing types of races, boss races, et cetera, you’ll some mes find yourself wondering why you bought this game when you already have PGR... Un l you get to the racing itself.
“BLUR HAS MADE A SLOW START IN THE MARKET AT THE MOMENT BUT I EXPECT TO HEAR GREAT THINGS IN THE FUTURE.”
Here you find the essence of the racing combat so widely loved in the Mario Kart games coming to the fore in Blur. Power-ups such as Shunt (Red shell to you MK gamers) and Bolt allow players to literally blow the crap out of each other mid-race, with these power-ups available, again like in Mario Kart, hovering over the racetrack. However, the abili es don’t stop there. The ability to infuse abili es with perks allows incredible combina ons, ins lling a depth of strategy and tac cal mastery that rivals some of the leading tles in other markets. Players fast to iden fy these will be able to switch from defence to offence with the pickup of one ability and the use of their perk loadout (similar to Modern Warfare perk loadouts in the case that you choose them before combat) and combina ons such as using a shield power-up then augmen ng it to form a ba ering ram just goes to show how deep the game can be at top level racing.
It was only a ma er of me before someone stepped up to the plate where Mario Kart was pitching with it’s already infec ous gameplay, but Bizarre Crea ons really has given an almighty swing of things and by the looks of it, connected where it ma ered. Having taken what Mario Kart was so good on and expanded on it in all direc ons, Blur has made a slow start in the market at the moment but I expect to hear great things in the future with regards to this tle. Paul Park
PRESENTATION: 18/20 STORY: 14/20 CONTROLS: 16/20 GAMEPLAY: 19/20 DURABILITY: 18/20
OVERALL
85/100 phonica magazine uk
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