As we told in in our last post about Dirk Dagger, we crossed our fingers that the new game would be out this weekend. Guess what? The wish was granted.
In this game you won’t find any advanced 3D graphics, which also is not the intent of this game. It follows the same animation style as its predecessor, the comic-like characters, surroundings and the “smack” and “poff” bubbles that occurs during some serious action. If this is not for you then you are free to now leave and find something else more interesting to read.
You can control Dirk by using the built-in camera on your Symbian-powered handset to navigate in this game (turned off by default) or you can go for the classic control using the D-pad and the numeric keypad. Mainly you’ll be using the left, right and center on the D-pad, with the exception of the mini games and when navigating the map over New Haven, where you’ll be using up and down as well.
The story begins with Dirk Dagger having a flashback and it’s also here you kind of get to learn the different control mechanism in the game. When there is something interesting or you see a potential clue, a magnifier will show up in front of an item and when you talk to someone Dirk’s head will show up with a talking bubble. Footsteps indicate that Dirk can walk to that area and items are gathered shown with a plus sign besides a suitcase popping up. This suitcase is your inventory and it can be brought up by using the right softkey, whereas the right is for pausing the game. Besides containing your items the suitcase also gives you the lead on which objectives you haven’t finished yet.
Your first task is to save a cat and as you can see from the screenshots having a rocket pack on your back this is doomed to go wrong. The cutscenes are enjoyable and the game has humor written all over it.
Dialogs are sarcastic and Rosyis sharp as always and she’s also the one to go to if you should run out of clues. Even the landlady is scary when giving out an answer as she knows both Swedish, French, Italian, German and what not kind of languages.
Playing the demo version first, you really ought to want to know what happens next as Dirk is put into a rather tight situation and when exiting the game you are provided with a nice shutdown. Dirk getting into difficult situations also marks that a new chapter is coming up in the game. This keeps the tension up throughout the game and personally I find that a nice touch.
Once you’ve bought the game and your progress go further, minigames can be unlocked. These can be played later and your best score uploaded to the N-Gage Arena. As you can see Harry is also back and if you don’t know Harry, you need not worry because Dirk will explain who he is in this game.
In overall the game provides nice details and different elements of both wonder and surprises. For instance a nice and cute bat can be seen in the sewers and in the extras you can find the faces of the developers of the game. Clicking on them, each will say something different, some which might make sense and others not. The sound in this game aids it throughout and the sound effects corresponds quite well with the animation. You can see that some of the timings are slightly off, but that is just if you keep yourself staring at the same scene for longer than intended. All in all there’s really nothing to complain about in this game and I have yet to play it through to the end.
You can get the game by going to the showroom on your handset, select update and it should show up. Do note that the game is a 30 Mb download so be sure to use a WiFi connection or if you prefer you can download the game from the N-Gage website.
Have you played the game and how enjoyable did you find it?
