Review written by Corn Bread

ZIOSoft has always been known to release high profile games, their Pocket PC port of PC games like Sim City 2000 and Age of Empires have all been well received by the Pocket PC gaming community. Now, their latest release; Spawn, is not a port of a PC game but an original game made exclusively for the Pocket PC.

Filling the niche for 3D action games, Spawn is basically a hybrid of the 3D action hit, Tomb Raider, and the popular Sega fighting game, Streets of Rage. You play the role of Spawn (surprise, surprise!) and pass through level after level beating up various bad guys as you go. As you might expect, almost every level has a boss character that you must defeat.

In traditional Spawn fashion, you can use Spawn's basic fighting abilities, Hellfire Powers, or pick up some heavy arms like Shot guns, Machine Guns, laser guns, etc. to defeat the enemy. One of the nice touches in this game is that Spawn gains level-ups and grows more powerful as you go further into the game. Gaining a level-up gives Spawn new abilities like more powerful hellfire power, intangibility, and the use of his chains and cape in attacking. Plus he looks more cooler and cooler as you level up!

Spawn fans will also enjoy the fact that characters like The Redeemer, Violator, Overkill, Sam and Twitch (among others) all make an appearance in the game. For an action game, Spawn is surprisingly very storyline-driven. You'll encounter a comic like cut scene at the end of every level and in those cut scenes, you can choose the direction of the game and whether the main character should follow a good or evil path.

You can move Spawn around by using your Pocket PC's D-pad or via the screen's invisible virtual D-pad (there are locations on-screen - specifically, on Spawn's body - where you can tap to move him, not very easy to do). Attacks can be carried out either by using one of the hardware buttons or by tapping the part of the screen near your power gauge, whereas jumping can only be achieved via a hardware button.

It's a shame that there is no way to customize the hardware buttons for control, an issue that will prove especially irritating for xda/T-Mobile owners, as the lack of hardware buttons makes it impossible to exit the game on the fly (the exit button is usually mapped to the record button which the xda lacks). You can only exit the game on the xda if you deliberately kill yourself in order to be transported to the main screen, or if you soft reset your Pocket PC.

Graphically, the game is impressive, and the backgrounds and all of the characters themselves are well drawn. The animation, on the other hand, is a major disappointment. The only animation that I think was well done is Spawn's running and jumping movement, but other than that, the rest of game moves jerkily, and it appears as though ZIOSoft rushed the animation department. For instance, when Spawn is attacking, his punches looks really weird as it is all too obvious that the punching motion lacks a few frames. To make matters worse, all of his enemies also suffer from this same malady.

Also, as much as I love Spawn's running animation, it gets kind of tiring to look at it since it's the only animation that Spawn does in every movement! It's is a little disorienting to look at Spawn always running forward even when you're turning around or moving backwards. It's a shame that ZIOSoft didn't polish the game's overall animation as this hindsight has greatly crippled the game's overall quality. The music, however, is nice and the sound effects complement the game well.

As with all 3D games of this nature, there were a few problems with the graphics and camera angles. Basically, the camera (the player's view) is fixed in the third person perspective (à la Tomb Raider). As a result, sometimes when you stand in front of a building or wall, it will obstruct your view and you won't be able to see anything unless you move away from the wall. Also, when you position yourself at certain angles, you will find yourself able to see through walls and buildings. This is a minor annoyance, but an annoyance that is nonetheless very distracting.

As you might have seen on the ZIOSoft website, this game is a little bit on the expensive side. Seldom is a Pocket PC game sold for $29.95, and with that kind of price, you would expect a very high quality game with an equal amount of game longevity. Spawn does manage to pass these criteria to some extent, especially given that its multiple-choice storyline aspect adds to its longevity. However, the aforementioned bugs, glitches and poor quality animations just left a bad taste in my mouth, with the result that I'm a little hesitant in recommending this game to my fellow Pocket PC gamers.

Let me put it this way, if you're a fan of the comic book Spawn, love action games, and are willing to put up with a few bugs and glitches (plus you own a Pocket PC that has a good D-Pad for gaming), then by all means go ahead and buy this game. Even though I got frustrated at some of the parts of the game, I still enjoyed it.

Before I wrap up this review, I have a warning though - xda/T-Mobile and iPAQ 5400 users, beware! Have you ever experienced arthritis in your hands? Well, you will if you play Spawn on either of those two devices. I did and my left hand is still hurting, so do make sure your Pocket PC has a decent D-Pad for gaming if you're going to purchase this game.

Spawn will set you back $29.95, and is compatible on all ARM and XScale Pocket PCs, with performance on either being roughly the same. 10 MB of storage memory and 8 MB of program memory is needed in order to run the game, and you can install it in either main RAM or onto a storage card.

Pros:

• Good graphics

• Nice in-game music and sound effects

• Multiple story paths

• Cool weapons and character upgrades

Cons:

• A few graphical glitches

• Animation not too well done

• Controls not customizable

• Price

Overall Score: 7/10

Many thanks to ZioSoft for providing us with our review copy.

You may wish to search for more reviews of games from ZioSoft. Alternatively, you can view all the reviews written by Corn Bread.