Elements Interactive Releases S-Tris 2

[Nurhisham Hussein]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.clickgamer.com/moreinfo.htm?pid=6265&PHPSESSID=a3b65f140a62836d2d45ff28d3b5816f' target='_blank'>http://www.clickgamer.com/moreinfo....d45ff28d3b5816f</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Elements Interactive recently released S-Tris 2, a freeware Tetris-like game powered by in-house developed mobile game engine Edge. As the follow-up of the company's highly popular S-Tris title, this new game features an additional "maniac" game mode, submittable highscores and customizable options and key mappings. The game can be downloaded for free for all supported devices."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/hisham-20060925_stris2_02.jpg" /><br /><br />Another Tetris clone! But this looks very nicely done, and is free to boot. What really stands out is Elements Interactive have 21 different versions of this program (8O) for nearly every device and screen resolution in the market, including Symbian and Windows XP. If you're on the lookout for a decent time-waster, this could be your ticket.

[Menneisyys]

Here’s my modest review:

Elements Interactive is a well-known developer of, in addition to some games (some of them being very cool; for example, Quartz2 (http://www.elementsgames.com/quartz2/), which even has multiplayer capabilities and has been reviewed in the Definitive Multiplayer PPC Game Roundup (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/menneisyys/102005MPPPCGames.asp)), the Edge multiplatform gaming library. Their latest, just-released title is a FREE and, in spite of this, pretty decent Tetris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris)-clone, which is meant to demonstrate the capabilities of Edge.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/kuvat/Stris2.bmp.png

Availability, compatibility

The game is available here (http://www.elementsgames.com/stris2/) for both Microsoft mobile platforms (yes, MS Smartphone too) and the desktop Windows, all Symbian platforms and even GP2X.

The Pocket PC version is even compatible with PPC 2002 and runs just great even on my 5-year-old iPAQ 3660. Also, I haven’t run into problems on my other test Pocket PC’s either (non-overclocked WM5 AKU 2.3 HTC Wizard, WM5 2.01 VGA iPAQ hx4700, WM5 A12 VGA Dell Axim x51v and WM2003SE VGA F-S Pocket Loox 720). That is, it’s compatible with all OS’es from PPC2k2 to WM5.

In addition to the D-pad, the hardware buttons (drop down, rotate, menu) worked on all these devices flawlessly.

Visuals

The game is compatible with all the three screen configurations of the Pocket PC: QVGA, VGA (yes, it uses high resolution) and square (240*240) screens. It’s VGA-aware (uses high resolution on VGA devices) and has some pretty good visuals particularly when you drop a title to make the game a bit faster.

Music

It has in-game music too. It’s a bit repetitive (after all, the in-game MOD file – embedded in \Program Files\S-Tris 2\res\bgm.epk if you want to have a look at it / change it to something else / extract it - is some 26 kbytes only in compressed form), but is still pretty good, particularly with a free title.

Verdict

Go get it!

[kamikun]

8O OMG! Ponies!!

Last weekend installed this on my Tosh e800 w/ WM2003 FE just for snits and grins. Figured there was no way it would work given the year-long invasion of 2.8 inch QVGA WM5 tiny smartphones.

Wow. Talk about compatibilty. I feel like it's 2004 all over again! In MyVGA (not ozVGA but the real old-school stuff) this thing flows like syrup... sweet.

I'm afraid that my wife is not going to give the Tosh back to me after seeing this in 4.0 VGA glory. Keeps asking why I don't use the Sharp WZero3 instead and let her keep the e800.

Like they say, "Once you go 4.0 inches of VGA, you'll never go back to a tiny quad outlay." Really looking forward to more development from this team and from their language...

Can I get a "Hoo-Ya" from any fellow WM2003 VGA cadets out there? :mrgreen: