[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Ever played Aspyr’s Enigmo (note that Aspyr has removed their Enigmo page in the meantime, this is why I’m giving you a Handango link. See for the 3D Accelerated Pocket PC Games and Demos Bible Part II for more info and the alternative review in German here)? Wanted something similar for the Pocket PC, running on all Pocket PC models, not only on Intel 2700G-enabled ones? (Unfortunately, you must have a 2700G-based Pocket PC – that is, currently, a Dell Axim x50v or x51v – to run Enigmo.) AeonFlame’s Gloop Zero may be of interest to you!

Availability, compatibility

It’s available here. The full version costs $14.99; there is also a trial version.

The game is compatible with WM2003+ operating systems (this means it’s NOT compatible with PPC 2002 – I’ve tested this). I had no problems running it on my QVGA/VGA WM2003(SE) / WM5 test devices – it ran OK on all of them.

Visuals

Pretty good, albeit nothing extraordinary. There’s no Hi-Res VGA support. The game is Landscape-only.

Sounds / music

Absolutely nothing. This is a BIG problem – the Zodiac version has nice in-game music. The developer should implement music as soon as possible. However, with the hack I've found out, you'll be able to play the original music in the background - see the next section.

Do you still want the original music on the Pocket PC?

If you have a compatible (Palm OS 5 and HiRes(+)) Palm OS device too, download the original Palm OS demo, install it onto your Palm device (installing will ONLY work through HotSync; direct PRC install off a storage card doesn't work), go to \PALM\Programs\GloopZero-GLPZ\data\other\music\ on your storage card and copy the files to your Pocket PC. These are midi files; this means you'll need to have a midi-enabled local player on your Pocket PC if you want to listen to just these files while playing the game. Please read the Midi Bible for more information on all these questions. Fortunately, the game lets for playing anything in the background - so, this hack will work.

This will only work if you have a Palm OS device - the Pocket PC version doesn't have these files and, as far as I know, it's not possible (without some elaborate hacking) to extract the original files from the given installer file.

Compared to Enigmo...

There is, in my opinion, no comparison as far as graphics and sound / music are concerned. Enigmo has very nice music and sound effects and is, of course, high-resolution. Even after dumbing down (which unfortunately, I don’t think will ever happen as Aspyr doesn’t seem to support the game any more, let alone release a new, non-2700G-only version of it) not to require hardware OpenGLES support (2700G, GoForce), it would still remain, in my opinion, better than Gloop Zero.

Playability-wise, on the other hand, Gloop Zero is a bit easier / faster in my opinion – with Enigmo, you need to position the gadgets far more thoroughly than with this title. With Gloop Zero, after deciding for a strategy on a given level, sometimes you “only” need to do some drawing with the stylus and all is set. With Enigmo, this takes far more time. That is, if you find Enigmo requiring far too much time to solve a given puzzle and want something similar, you may find Gloop Zero very cool.

Compared to the Palm OS version...

Unfortunately, the regular Palm OS version (I've played it on my Palm Tungsten T3) also lacks both sounds / music and HiRes+ graphics (it uses 320*320 in Portrait - that is, HiRes, without the + - only).

Verdict

Well, if you’re lucky enough to have a Dell Axim x50v or x51v and have already given Enigmo a try (if you haven’t, do it now – it’s a masterpiece!), I think you’ll be disappointed with Gloop Zero at first – Enigmo is definitely better-looking and -sounding. It's only because of the much faster gameplay that you may want to prefer this title to Enigmo.

If you, on the other hand, don’t have any 3D accelerated Pocket PC devices and want to have an entertaining game that will keep you and your brain occupied, you definitely want to consider giving the trial of this game a try – it is pretty cool, despite the major flaws (no music / sound and, to a lesser degree, no high-resolution support). Remember, again, that you can "hack" the original midi music files out of the Palm OS version if you really want to listen to them while playing.

(News source: PocketGamer.org.)