Wave Blazer

Think motor racing is a rich person's sport? Well, it's like a bunch of kids playing with Matchbox cars compared to off-shore powerboat racing. This is a sport so expensive that it's populated largely by oil sheiks and retired millionaires who have personal fortunes so vast that sponsorship isn't a necessity, it's a novelty.

This probably explains how the racers in Wave Blazer can afford to tear up the waterways in and around Europe with nary a regard to their surroundings. Blasting through the canals of the Low Countries and the Venetian backwaters in a collection of insanely fast boats, it's a sport requiring a fair bit of local council compensation, we're willing to bet.

It's all in a good cause though, because Wave Blazer is another hit from the people that brought us Raging Thunder, one of our favourite driving games.

Both Wave Blazer and Raging Thunder are Symbian titles, which means they are technically superior to the usual Java titles that you download on your phone. This means bright, vibrant 3D visuals, enhanced sound effects, and other special bells and whistles that you'd never find in a Java game.

It also means that it's slightly more expensive than your usual game, however, and larger, too; Wave Blazer clocks in at over 1,000KB, four or five times the size of a typical mobile phone game.

Of course, this would all count for nought if the game was rubbish. But Wave Blazer is the opposite – it's a fabulous accomplishment, both in terms of the game's mechanics and the playing experience it offers.

To touch on the game's lush visuals first, there's no way that you'd fail to be impressed by them. Making water work in video games is one of those challenges that make or break a game, much like realistic hair is in CGI movies. If it doesn't look or behave in a believable manner, everything else becomes irrelevant.

And while the water in Wave Blazer isn't spectacularly authentic, it's good enough to suspend your belief while playing. It's choppy in all the right places, reflects the scenery around it and just feels right as you zip across the surface of it in your boat.

Your boat handles exactly like you'd expect it to, and thankfully it's not just a case of the same physics from the tarmac-treading Raging Thunder being transferred to a wetter environment. It's an entirely new experience that'll find you all at sea – quite literally – when you play for the first time.

Piloting a powerboat demands a different approach to a car, taking a wider line and beginning your turn much earlier. It's a technique you soon pick up and it makes for a novel racing experience. When you nail a succession of curves without banging the riverbank it's a genuinely satisfying moment.

All these little gems make up for the fact that you'll need to put in some serious time before you're even close to being competitive in the races on offer. This is one incredibly hard game, and if you think you're a pretty good racer you're going to be humbled soon and often.

In fact, it's too hard. The eight tracks each have a difficulty rating, and it's when you notice that the second one in, a sneaky affair with lots of jumps and narrow bends, is described as 'very easy', that you start to think that the odds might be stacked against you.

Considering that you need to finish in a medal-winning position in a race to unlock the next one, it'll take you a long time to access all eight tracks. After an hour's play we were still stuck on that pesky second race, for example.

But Wave Blazer is a game you'll stick with, simply because it looks and plays so well. It's a shame that relatively few people will be able to enjoy it – you need a Series 60 Nokia handset to run it.

If you are one of the lucky S60 few, though, Wave Blazer offers a refreshing change to the usual rubber on the road antics, and a great game, to boot. If you've got any friends who doubt that mobile phones are a viable platform for gaming, this would be the title to convert them.