"A Nice Platformer"

I never heard of Pandemonium, even though it was released on the PC, Play Station and the Saturn before the N-Gage, I never saw it in the stores. Even now I haven't played the other versions of the game, so I won't be comparing it to anything.

Graphics: 8
The graphics are very nice, clear and colourful. The only downside to them is that the frame rate slows down FAR too often. It seems that whenever there is a wall behind your character the frame rate drops dramatically, and even lower when there's effects like waterfalls, rivers etc.

Sound: 5
Whilst the sound is good and clear for the first 5 minutes of playing, there's this annoying elasticy spring noise that is made whenever you jump, which can get very annoying after a while. The waterfall noise also sounds to me like there's interference in a TV signal, even on the hands free kit (so it's not the speaker at fault). Apart from those two defects, the voices are clear, and so are the other sound effects, which there are a lot of.

Music: 0
The only music in this game is when you complete a level there's a little tune. But I won't even include that since its about 3 seconds long.

Controls: 10
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the controls. The character is very easy to control, the buttons are very responsive, and there's only about 2 buttons used in the game (3 when using one of the characters).

Game Play: 9
The story is a bit...strange, but I suppose it's original. The learning curve is about 10 seconds, since it's basically left and right movement with the occasional jumping and shooting. There are lots of puzzles and secrets in this game too, and 4 difficulties. When playing online it's a very different experience. It's basically you racing against someone else, but there's usually a quirk in it, for example, your character won't stop jumping, or the camera spins around like crazy - just to increase the difficulty - and it's sometimes quite entertaining to watch the other person get stuck or die at a pathetic spot! Also when you download the patch for the game, a handy strategy icon comes up at the bottom corner in case you get stuck or need a tip at that point.

Overall: 7
A very good platformer game. Although I haven't played the other versions of this game, from what I have played on the N-Gage, this is a very good platformer which I would of missed had it not of come on the N-Gage. I recommend you at least try this out if you're an N-Gage owner.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/30/04