Fish Labs has reeled in some awards lately for some of their games and are a nominee in the International Mobile Gaming Awards for their upcoming Galaxy on Fire 2. So I am happy to take a look at another of their games today, PowerBoat Challenge.

I have played the game on both a Nokia and a Sony Ericcson phone in an effort to give it equal marks. The reason for this is because that the Nokia Symbian 60 operating system has some performance issues with Java which Nokia should really look into. As such, on many phones the game will lag due to sound effects and music (turn them off if you need to). So the Sony Ericcson is a secondary test unit to see how it plays in a non-S60 environment. The game also loads far faster on the Sony Ericcson W760i than it does on the Nokia N81, another shortcoming of Java on the S60 platform.

Alright, now that you’re all up to speed on the technical side of things, let’s get moving with the review. In PowerBoat Challenge you are a speed boat racer who is just entering the world of professional racing and as such you will catch some flak from the more veteran racers. But soon you’ll be flying past them and flipping them the bird as you race your way to fame and fortune.

The premise of the game is cool. It’s like a mobile Hydro Thunder, a game which I was just playing at the pool hall last weekend as a matter of fact, and it’s well done just like that game was. You start out by choosing one of four racers and boats, each of which has differing levels of abilities in regards to top speed, acceleration, agility and Turbo. Don’t worry you’re not stuck with these stats for the duration and as you win races you earn money that can be used to max out the specs on your boat.

There are a total of four islands in the game and as you successfully complete races in one you eventually open the next. The goal is simple - Be the best powerboat racer in the world. That means winning races and earning what amount to style points. Style is decided by how closely you pass the buoys during the races. The score ranges from zero to five stars. There are various types of races including time trial, elimination and a tournament of 3 to 5 races. In total there are 26 courses to complete, fairly large for a mobile game.