Mobile Gaming — One Old & One New #01
We checked out a few random mobile games on a few random platforms. How did each fare?
City of Chaos Online [Android]
City of Chaos Online is a relatively popular MMORPG starting in a middle school setting and branching out to the larger city. It’s relatively popular, with nearly any area of the game being well-populated. It’s PvP-focused which can create some initial frustration until you are adequately geared up. The cash shop and ads aren’t too out-of-line for a mobile app but are still too frequent and predatory for those used to console and PC gaming.
The camera perspective can be a bit dodgy at times, hit detection a bit off, and controls a bit less responsive than ideal. Pairing it with a gamepad creates a bit of a 3D brawler mixed with Grand Theft Auto knock-off vibe.
It’s a completely playable title and as a free-to-play title, is worth the time investment. Better titles are available, but this title is still above average on the platform as a whole.
SCORE: 3/5 [Borderline Recommend]
Google Play:
Also available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad:
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow [J2ME]
It’s time for a trip back to the days of Nokia being relevant in the mobile phone market. Castlevania for one of those old dog phones probably sounds painful, but it’s surprisingly a well-designed and completely playable Castlevania title. Levels are interesting for being confined to much smaller areas, controls are responsive, and platforming actually works pretty well.
The boss fights are interesting and require actual skill, not random luck. It’s surprising to see such an early mobile title be so well-executed, but the Java mobile titles of the late J2ME phone era are actually fairly decent, even if they still feel like cheap substitutes for PSP, PS Vita, and Nintendo DS titles.’
There is supposedly a multiplayer mode in this game but I wasn’t able to find or test it. It might only be present in other versions of the game.
SCORE: 4/5 [RECOMMEND]
No longer available for sale but if you search online for J2ME file archive, you will probably find a download link for it. We used PcNexus Java Emulator to play this. It is available from:
https://www.pcnexus.net/2015/06/how-to-play-java-jar-games-on-windows-pc.html
I was going to close this article out with a discussion of a Blackberry 10 game but I’m having difficulty with the installer and Java conflicting. I’ll write an article on how I resolve this issue later today.
