Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are like three huge German Shepherds wrangling over a bone, locked in a maul of sharp claws and teeth. Imagine putting a pampered, French Poodle into
that equation---it has no chance. Right? You might think that the poor little, purebred pooch would be ravaged apart by the strength and power of the other three, tangled and shredding in the ravenous scrap. Well, if the Poodle’s fur is dyed green and Gizmondo has been shaved onto its side, guess again because this small newcomer might just have more bones than one to chew on and believe you me it can handle it.
The Gizmondo is a very powerful and capable handheld unit with all of its internal specifications designed by big, well-known companies within the electronic industry. With 400 MHz ARM9 power from Samsung, a 128-but 3D Graphics accelerator from Nvidia and MPEG 4 video playback from Microsoft, it is no wonder the unit was initially at a sales price of £299. The company have now released the same unit at a price of £130 with less accessories and uses their Smart Adds scheme. Basically, you are sent three adverts everyday on products related to your interests and for putting up with them, you get £100 knocked off of the price, bargain! However, even at a cheaper price this machine is not to be reckoned with. After a few rounds in the ring with either the Nintendo DS or the PlayStation Portable, the Gizmondo would go home with the Championship belt.
‘Would’, meaning in theory.
As far as specifications, outlines, estimations and hopes go, the Gizmondo could be the new heavyweight power that all of us has been dreaming of within the handheld market. However, when you finally get your hands on the machine you have been patiently waiting for, for over half a year, all of its said power and statistics will hit you like a cruel joke.
Presentation--wise, Gizmondo as a company has put a lot of thought into image. The box is silver, square, not really anything ground breaking but it looks futuristic, high tech, fancy. Pulling off the cardboard sleeve, it then opens out into two halves, the first has things such as the power cord, earphones, etc but the other half, nestled softly in a recess of soft, felt like material.
“Oh hello.” The little machine says with an intrigued tone. Its sleek black frame about the screen glistening, its comfortable rubber like casing inviting you to pick it up, the silver uniform buttons all temping you to just push them all. “How do you do?”
Ignoring the machine’s charm as it looks at the instruction booklet thinking, shouldn’t you read that first before you turn me on? you go straight for the power button and press it. Nothing happens.
“Well I did tell you to read the instruction booklet didn’t I?! Through the power of telepathy.” So alright, it is a little smarter than you first thought it out to be so you pick up the instruction booklet and read ALL of it, every little word. Pointless. The Gizmondo manual must be the most pointless and waste of paper ever known to man for the use with an electrical appliance. Even kettles beat it. It is so basic. However, within the box is also a CD-Rom.
“Ahaha, it was just my ploy to get you to read.” The Gizmondo mocks again as it still swaggers about with its shiny surfaces. “You actually have to load the CD and learn everything about me from there.” Although you are now a little distrusting, you do again what it tells you, put the CD-Rom into the drive and wait for it to load.
As it does, you are presented with a flash media presentation of some of the amazing qualities of the machine. This is just to tease and annoy you further of the many things you cannot do yet with the machine. Of course you can skip the intro but you still have to watch for the first time, just in case you miss something important. When you are actually allowed to get to the information on the CD, the Adobe file seems to be filled with lots of useful information but it answers none of the questions that actually require more than common sense.
“How do you…? What if I…? Perhaps when this is…?” You stutter but the machine is not going to help you, it sits there like a lazy house cat.
“Who me? I am sorry, I don’t do instructions.” Soon enough, you are ready to tear the damn thing apart but if you keep your cool and start to order it around then you will get some results. Giving up on the instructions on the CD-Rom and the manual, I pushed the power button again, this time as hard as I could and for as long as I could. Sure enough, a little light flickered and the machine was on. Not so smart now, eh?
So it is on! It is finally on! Most of your are thinking, well that was a waste of an entire page, going on and on about instructions! Rightly so. The kind of frustration and boredom you are feeling now is exactly what is experienced when you own and first open this machine. It is time for some gaming, time to see what this machine is fully capable of, time to put it to the test and get my money’s worth. Right?
“WAIT please. I am loading, stop pressing buttons! How rude, honestly. These days you cannot get any manners at all from these young and brutish video gamers. No, OFF! No button pressing, no, I am loading.” This is what you get. First it is a fancy loading bar in the form of a circle that goes around three or four times and it then disappears. “I told you: No pressing of my silver buttons until I have FINISHED loading!” Still? The unit is still loading? Yes, it is. After the circular loading bar, you are then shown a screen with the Gizmondo logo on it and down at the bottom in small writing, yes, you guessed it, “Loading…”
So much for 400 MHz of power! A four tape Commodore 64 game would have loaded by now! Surrounded by all things Gizmondo, the box, its manuals, charger, headphones and polystyrene bits from the packaging, you cannot contain your excitement and lust for a new platform of gaming. The last thing you need is a…
“I have loaded now. However, because of your button pressing and man handling I am going to put you through a registration set-up to teach you a lesson.” Yes. Because of all of the many features of the Gizmondo, such as its SMS messaging and GPS/GPRS capabilities, you have to put in your details such as your name, home address, etc. Once that has been completed, you are then sent a message containing a code for you to register on the Gizmondo official website.
“When will you let me play some games you black handheld of Satan?!” Screaming with annoyance inside, you are just about to give up on it when it finally takes you to the home screen.
“Alright, alright, there is no need to get so worked up about it. Here, look, it is the home screen, only took a few minutes didn’t it. Looks like someone needs to go for anger management.” Pushing its luck perhaps but if you have just spent £130 on it (With Smart Adds – will explain later) you are not going to break it. It knows this and it is this hold over you that it uses to drag you through all of its set-up processes.
So, you are in, at the home page, what do we have? Well, seeing as though this is a dedicated games site only, I am not going to go into details about the other functions of the machine. If you want to find out more specs about them or need them explained, then you can go to the official Gizmondo website at www.gizmondo.com. In short, the Gizmondo has a digital camera but sadly no flash, plays movies and music, has SMS and picture messaging capabilities and has advanced technology such as GPS and GPRS.
“I have seen your type before, you are one of those video gamers aren’t you? Fine! I give up, I have thrown loading screen after loading screen at you, not to mention not one but two registrations and even with all of these extra gadgets you still want the games. Always the games!” Thank you very much you little black machine of marvellous technology and wonder! Those were the words we all have been waiting for.
So, how does it work? The same as any other gaming handheld really. You take the game (with the Gizmondo they have used SD cards, something I hate and find really flimsy) and slot it into the machine. Two options will then come up on the screen: run SD card or back. We want to run the SD card of course! You select it to run, it starts to run.
“Hockey Rage 2005, yes. Made by so and so, yes, yes, yes!” Crash. It freezes, the screen is stuck on a little dude who looks like the toilet for men symbol and is sitting on a chair with a levitating checkers board in front of him. “Ah.”
And so the problems begin there. If it is not just a sloth like manner when you load the games or even just scroll through the options of the device itself, then comes the crashing, where the screen freezes, out of game and in game, forcing you to take off the back cover and levering out the battery to physically cut the power. It is a terrible fault that should not happen at this stage. How can a machine with 400 MHz power simply crash like that?! The ironic side of it is, is that Hockey Rage 2005 is a very short and low powered game, with not much about it and simple graphics. For you to practically take the machine a part so you can then go through the loading screens and crashing again, is just not worth the effort.
The battery is another problem in itself. Picture this, you get ready for a long car journey to
Lets text someone to brag about getting this ‘amazing’ machine. So you text a few people, say you sent three or four. The pre-pay Vodaphone sim card has £5 already on there so you will be fine for now. A couple of days later you go to send another text, when you actually NEED to but again, with its innocent look, the Gizmondo refuses. “What? You want to send a text, from me? On this sim card? A text? An SMS message? Oh no sorry, you cannot do that, no money, no credit. You have credit to send SMS messages. Didn’t you know that? How on earth did you buy me online? Someone with your intelligence should not have even been able to get me out of the box.” Great. Another problem. That is all I need. So, I pick up the phone and get onto the service help-line, this time it is a woman. It turns out, that you only get £1 credit on the sim card and then the other £4 you receive through their Smart Adds scheme. However, the Smart Adds scheme is not up and running yet so you cannot actually have your £4 credit that was promised. Gritting your teeth, you put down the phone. You still have the number of the person you want to contact in your directory, so you can just text from your mate’s phone, right? WRONG. You go into the directory and all of the contacts have mysteriously disappeared! It is like the Gizmondo, during its midnight party, became drunk, fell over and all of the numbers jumbled out of its head!
Perhaps you can calm yourself with a movie. So you connect the Gizmondo up to your PC, download a movie onto it, disconnect it and then get comfortable, ready for the movie to begin. You press play and it begins to seek and seek and seek and seek. “Seeking for the movie, err, having a hard time here. Wrong pair of glasses on you see. Left the others back at the factory, amongst all of the other units. Sorry. Looks like you will have to watch it some other time, eh?” The movie clip was in the right format yet the Gizmondo did not want to know and I tried it with several others too and out of seven or so, only one worked. There was no hope to be seen at all with this machine and even as I speak it sits on my shelf collecting dust, getting ready to be returned.
Where does this leave us then? It leaves us with a machine that has a whole load of problems both gaming wise and also elsewhere. The service line helped to clear things up last time, so lets try it again. This time it is a man, an Asian man (please do not explode the comment boxes below with accusations of me being racist because I am not, I have several Asian friends.) and he was very hard to understand over the phone. I tell him of the problems and what does he turn around and say?
“Well, I do not think there is a problem with the unit itself. Perhaps with the battery it needs to be changed but with it crashing, not reading movies correctly and wiping your sim card, there is not obvious fault with the machine.”
You have got to be having a flipping giraffe! No fault with the machine?! And you expect me to a) believe that and b) keep this nice looking hunk of scrap? No chance. So, he gave me a number to call for returning units and also an address to send it to so it could be checked over and ‘fixed’.
I know for a fact that out of everyone I know, I was the most excited person ever about the Gizmondo, what it offered and what it claimed it could do. However much I wish with all of my strength that the blasted thing would actually work and perform well, it will not and does not. The unit is a disgrace. It could have had a big impact on the gaming world, smashing its way into the handheld market from a low yet strong position but it has failed to. I would not buy another one. The opening line of games are rubbish and come under the header ‘budget titles’ in terms of quality and gameplay. It has only one amazing game going for it and that is Colours but when and if we will see it, who knows. Frankly, I do not care. It was wasted money purchasing this handheld when it could have gone on games for a decent one such as the DS or PSP.
If you want original gaming, chance your luck with a Gizmondo. They have great and innovative ways of play coming out in the future. Within the game Colours, it utilises GPS to create zones and boundaries, territories for your gang to fight for and rule over. In another up and coming title Agaju it uses the digital camera in the back to pick up movement and use it to control elements of the game. However, if you have any sense, you will realise that £130 and most definitely £230 is a waste for the sake of two games. Stay well clear if you are far from desperate for that next gaming fix.
Tobias Rowe
