MWC 2010: Hands on with bada launch games including Asphalt 5 and Need for Speed Shift

The biggest news of the show so far has been the revealing of Wave, the first device in Samsung's new bada platform.

Having had some quality time hands on with Wave, first impressions are that it's pretty neat. The Super AMOLED screen is nice and bright, while the aluminum casing provides a good combination of high build quality and robustness, while being thin and light.

The only thing I don't like about it is the main rhomboid shaped home button, but that's just probably me.

Anyhow, what we really care about is what gaming will be like on bada.

On the main stand, there are four examples, all of which should be available at bada's launch, due in April.

The first one I tried was Gameloft's Asphalt 5 racer.

Still a work in progress, it played super smoothly, with the 3D graphics and special effects easily handled thanks to the Wave's 1 GHz CPU and its support for OpenGL ES 2.0. Indeed, there was a real sense of speed playing the game as I raced around a road circuit, attempting to avoid oncoming traffic.

Control used the phone's accelerometer for tilt, and aside from some initial calibration issues that had me playing with the camera view split diagonally somewhere between landscape and portrait - fix: restart the phone - I was impressed.

Next to Asphalt was EA's Need for Speed Shift.

The was much less advanced in terms of its completeness, with only one track and one opponent car available. The demo had you driving around, with the track continuously looping.

Graphically, it didn't feel as polished as Asphalt 5, although that could be due to the more simulation feel of Shift compared to Asphalt's unashamedly arcade gameplay.

Com2uS's Homerun Battle 3D was another game on display. Already released successfully on iPhone and Android (with over 1 million units downloaded), the casual baseball game has you trying to hit as many homeruns as possible. Personally, I think it's brilliant, and the bada version matched the iPhone and Android versions I've already played.

A key component of the game - the online head-to-head battles - will of course be included in the bada version, making Homerun 3D Battle the first cross-platform iPhone, Android and bada title.

The final game on the Samsung stand was Gamelion's Furry Legends.

A bada exclusive, it's a colourful physics-based 3D platformer along the lines of Rolando or LocoRoco, in which you have to tilt and jump a flurry ball creature through various puzzles in order to free his chums.

For various technical reasons, the game wasn’t actually working on-device, but you could scroll around the 3D levels if not play them. According to Gamelion, the game is working fine in the bada emulator but there are some issues to be ironed out in terms of getting the required mathematical fidelity on the device.

All-in-all, then, it looks like bada is going to have a solid line-up of launch titles available, with other publishers sure to be announcing more games in the coming weeks.