New Zune Game Revue, Coming Right At You

A batch of new, free, 3D games have shown up on the Zune Marketplace for the new Zune HD. How do titles like Audiosurf and Project Gotham Racing fare on Microsoft's handheld?

A total of five new titles appeared in the Zune Marketplace recently, each taking advantage of the HD version of Microsoft's handheld's increased 3D capability, touch screen controls, and accelerometer functions. Let's take them for a spin, shall we?

Audiosurf Tilt

The Zune HD version of the exceptional Steam PC game, Audiosurf transforms the music on your Zune into a rollercoaster obstacle course, challenging you to gather points on the track by tilting your Zune back and forth, avoiding obstacles. It's a rather simplified version of the original game, with no special modes. Just collect dots, and spend them on new track decorations. It does, however, come with a song visualizer that should be a bit hit with folks who hook their HD to the television set.

Checkers
Checkers is Chess for those who'd rather not think too much, and the game fares as well as you'd expect it to on the Zune HD. Multiple difficulty settings for playing against the AI should provide a challenge for anyone with a Zune HD who wants to play a board game. Touch screen controls handle nicely. I can't really complain.

Lucky Lanes Bowling
A simple little bowling game with a lot of personality. Crazy characters bowl down even crazier lanes, tracing the path of the ball with your finger and then letting fly. You can unlock new characters and lanes as you play, or challenge friends in Wi-Fi mode. It's small, cute, and free. Works for me.

Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition
It's no PGR4, but it gets the job done. The Zune HD version of Project Gotham Racing showcases the Ferrari, with 12 different models to choose from and 33 events to play through in career mode. The game runs quickly and smoothly, with the tilt function of the Zune HD used to steer and on-screen buttons for breaking and accelerating. Like PRG, the player earns Kudos for how well they drive, using them to unlock new cars along the way. Certainly a capable little racer, and the price (free) is hard to beat. If you've friends who own Zune HDs, you can even play multiplayer. Check out a bad video of it in action below.

Vans SK8: Pool Service
Tilt to move and touch to trick, Vans SK8: Pool Service is pretty much the same thing as the iPhone version. If skating around a pool is your idea of a good time, then this is for you. Otherwise, it's a nice example of how the Zune HD can do just about anything the iPhone can do, only slightly smaller.

All in all this is a fine crop of titles that show, if anything, that the Zune HD has the ability to take on the iPhone from a gaming standpoint. What it doesn't have is the popularity. Will it ever achieve the level of love the iPhone has received? Doubtful, but Microsoft is putting on a good show.

Downloading them now.

The Zune HD does look like it has potential for better games than what's on the Apple iStore. But honestly I don't think PMPs are that appealing for games. The DS and PSP stand on their own as gaming systems. They are not seen as just some quick portable substitute for the home consoles (some people still hold this perspective though. A friend of mine never uses his PSP anymore because he sees no need for it now that he drives and doesn't really have many opportunities to play on the go. When he arrives home, it's PS3 time, PSP is seen as inferior to the console experience. But for a lot of people these days, it's no longer like that ever since handheld games became much more substantial compared to the Gameboy days where games were mostly inferior versions of what was available on consoles).

Cell phone and PMP games however are DEFINITELY substitutes. Almost everyone plays these games because they need something to kill time (whereas it isn't like this with the DS and PSP so much). If I have surplus air time on my prepaid, I'll use it to buy a game to play on the go when I'm bored (I love DS but I wouldn't be caught dead with one in public. While it's all the rage with women, it's seen as dorky if a man is seen playing with a handheld console, especially Nintendo handhelds.) But there's no way I'd buy a cell phone or PMP game just for the sake of playing that game. I'd rather play with my DS or 360. And at the end of the day, if you are just looking to kill time, carrying around just your cell phone is more practical than carrying both a cell phone and a PMP (ie. Zune HD). So for people that just want to quickly play a cheap game to kill time, they're gonna opt for the all-in-one iPhone (no need to carry a cell phone and a pmp. you get two in one), not the Zune HD.

The reason I have a PMP is because I listen to an ass load of music and do not want my phone dying all the time. As for gaming on the thing, I usually only play games when I am taking a dump. And I play Sudoku before going to bed.

I'm so behind the times, I'm not even sure I know what PMP stands for...

Regardless, I downloaded these yesterday and as I have a 4 hour flight coming up this weekend, expect to spend some time with them.  Oh, and sudoku on the zune kicks ass.

Nice but Ipod has much more, infact Zune HD and Ipod are basically the same, except Ipod has 100000x more apps, tho Zune HD has movies you can buy from the marketplace.

I want to see some advanced games on the Zune HD.

Too bad it doesn't serve as a phone also...

Portable Music Player

Shit I'm behind... I had to update my Zune HD to the newest software... well now time to download games... certainly the PGR looks promising

PGR is pretty good... it's got a pretty decent carrer mode for a PMP racer