Joint Task Force Action

In 1902, A Trip to the Moon was one of the first films to feature colour photography. Director George Méliès, unwilling to make do with primitive technology, painstakingly painted thousands of frames by hand.

The effect, as the astronauts flickered into a lunar landscape saturated with blooming colour, was both striking and implausible. Whilst there were undeniably blues, greens, and oranges on the screen, nobody could ever confuse the gaudy hues of the film with those of real life. A Trip to the Moon occupied a kind of limbo.

In a similar way, Most Wanted's mobile version of PC strategy game Joint Task Force Action is lodged between two technological generations: 2D and 3D.

Using an elevated viewpoint that jerkily swivels to track the players' movement, the graphics more closely resemble the arthritic frame-by-frame 3D of ambitious early video games than the fluid polygons that abound in modern console titles. Like George Méliès's Moon, Joint Task Force Action can take some getting used to.

It's like this: to navigate, you rotate the map with '4' and '6', whilst '1' and '3' budge the avatar – a grizzled veteran called O'Connell – left and right. Suspect framerate notwithstanding, this control method has the advantage of enabling you to fire a bullet – or a tongue of flame, or a rocket – at any point, from any direction, into anybody.

Some mobile games address the sticky issue of aiming by making the crosshairs automatically track targets, which diminishes your sense of direct control. Others only allow you to fire along the axis you are facing along, making each firefight a pedantic and laborious ordeal.

Joint Task Force Action's control method successfully sidesteps both of these pitfalls. Dealing with both the rotate and sidestep functions as you maraud your way through the first few battles is tricky, but the controls turn out to be versatile, intuitive, and well-suited to the game's fast-paced action.

In the role of O'Connell, you cover the gamut from hostage liberation to bomb disposal, disguising yourself as a terrorist one minute and shooting enemies from the back of an APC the next. Yes, topically enough, it's all about topping terrorists – for which purpose you take possession of a rifle, a flamethrower, a machine gun, and a rocket launcher.

Moreover, as if this arsenal weren't hazardous enough, your destructive power is augmented by explosive red barrels that, judiciously destroyed, shower nearby enemies in shrapnel and fire.

Of course, you're as vulnerable to these incendiary deaths as your enemies, so it pays to tread carefully. Indeed, although bullets fly and explosions rumble, you're unlikely to reach the end of the game's nine levels without stealth and circumspection.

All too often you'll find yourself clearing an area, striding confidently into the coughing, smoky carnage, and promptly dying as a terrorist emerges from a hidden corner and shoots your head off.

Success is therefore all about taking cover, swivelling the screen, and using sidestep. If you don't master these, play becomes a macabre amalgam of Groundhog Day and the Charge of the Light Brigade.

There are no savepoints, so dying means starting again, and at the end of a plodding attempt this can grate. O'Connell's outsize frame, meanwhile, occupies such a large proportion of the screen that your range of vision suffers and the odd fog-blind death is all but unavoidable.

As a result, Joint Task Force Action can sometimes feel more like a memory game than one where the object is to think on your feet. Getting through a tricky level is nerve-racking, and not necessarily for the right reasons.

That said, it's more success than failure thanks to the grittily accomplished graphics, the conscientious variety of the missions, the intelligent control system, and its clear refusal – both foolish and brave – to concede to the limitations of its platform.