Nokia are slowly harnessing the diversity of the N-Gage, with the release today of a demo of Pathway to Glory (http://www.allaboutngage.com/games/viewgame.php?id=32). One download from the Dedicated Website (http://www.pathwaytoglory.com/), copy the files to a blank MMC card with at least 16mb of space, and you'llbe able to play a solo mission, and a bluetooth multiplayer mission, for free. Kudos to Nokia to let everyone have a look at this. Expect a full Preview from AAN in the near future. PtG is scheduled to be released in time for Christmas.

Direct link to Self-Extracting Zip File (http://arena.n-gage.com/n-gage/web/en/ptg_demo/pc_demo/Pathway_to_Glory_Preview.exe).

While i have yet to play the demo (I have grabbed it already), I think that doing a limited playable demo for an N-Gage game is a great idea. If I knew that I really enjoyed The Sims, I might go and buy it. But if all I have to go on is some screenshots and random user reviews, I'm not about to go and blow my hard-earned money on something (and that applies to any other software, too).

Good work, Nokia!

Downloaded it, & played through the solo mission. Conclusion: excellent.

It's really pretty impressive stuff - I was initially a bit dubious when I heard the game-play description, as I don't have the patience for Warcraft-type games, but it's very addictive & absorbing (& no tedious resource management stuff, which I know some poeple like, but which bores me quickly). I also like the attention to ambient detail, such as the way that the island has olive groves & so on. I did complete the demo solo mission fairly quickly, but I am a veteran of the Golden Oldie PC game "Lazer Squad", so that's perhaps just me. And of course, this is only probably the first mission, so I expect the difficulty level will go up as the game progresses. Plus, I didn't worry overmuch about getting 3/5 of my squad killed either. That might well be different with a whole campaign to play. I'll definitely be buying this one, though.