Previews

Hands on with Snakes Subsonic on N-Gage

Yet another skin for Nokia's favourite reptile

Hands on with Snakes Subsonic on N-Gage
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| Snakes Subsonic

Snake is the Mario of mobile gaming, and like Mario it gets a facelift every time a new generation of hardware appears. Naturally, the latest N-Gage platform is no exception, and during our recent Finnish excursion we had a second chance to get our hands on the flashest version so far of Nokia's evergreen reptile, Snakes Subsonic.

As you'd expect, it looks great. The whole game is arrayed with grids and decked out in colourful polygons, much as in Snakes, the previous N-Gage iteration.

Snakes Subsonic is more complex than its predecessors but no more eager to cast off the abstract simplicity that made the original such a hit. Your snake still doesn't have a face, for instance, and the backdrops resemble your grandmother's idea of what the inside of a computer looks like: sterile, brittle, and fluorescent.

The big innovation this time around is that you're no longer restricted to the two sides of a single plane. To draw a final parallel with Mario, in Snakes Subsonic you can run up walls, down ramps, and generally behave as though gravity were an ecclesiastical fiction.

Secondary to this is the sonic feature alluded to in the title. The score (which includes music by DJ Champion, whoever he is) swells and taps in concert with the colours of the levels, although in the auditory chaos of a press trip it was difficult to discern just how much this affects the gameplay. Not much, we suspect, but it's a nice feature nonetheless.

The core gameplay, meanwhile, is unaltered. You need to collect green energy power-ups in order to grow, and if you coil headlong into your own tail you die. Obstacles other than yourself are less lethal, however, diminishing your energy incrementally. You can collect a range of other power-ups, including shields and missiles, and to advance a level you need to empty your blue evolution bar by following the trail of glowing blue pellets.

There's a multiplayer mode, too, in which you compete with up to three others to collect a set number of points, and, being an N-Gage game, you can upload your scores onto the platform to see how you measure up.

It doesn't feel dramatically different from Snakes, but every area of the game represents an improvement. Because the graphics are more advanced, the puzzle element is more involved, requiring you to plot your course with care so that you don't end up too far away from a pellet to continue your evolution.

Snakes Subsonic is the first in the series not to be complimentary, a decision partly reflected in the quality of the game. Whereas Snakes contained just 35 levels, this version contains 40, themed to match the four elements of earth, wind, fire, and water, as well as an additional 20 from N-Gage Arena. In principle, this number could transpire to be greater.

This is the current peak of a slow but steady evolution for the Snake franchise, then, and so far we can't find much to criticise.

Click 'Track it!' to find out whether we manage it come review time.

Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.