During a recent visit to Nokia's Espoo (Helsinki) offices, I had the opportunity to look round Nokia's Experience Lounge, which showcases all of Nokia's latest products and services - from Ovi Maps and Nokia Messaging to the latest Nokia handsets. As an additional bonus, tucked away in one corner of the room, is a set of shelves that contain one of almost every Nokia phone model ever produced. So how to share this with loyal readers? Film a walkabout of course!
It's your 1990's Tamagotchi taken into 2010 - Creebies sees you looking after the welfare of multiple kritters and their island, with mini-games and a complete 3D virtual environment to wander around. Ewan's rather taken by the title and pronounces it perfect both for casual and long-term gaming here in his Creebies review for our Ovi Gaming site.
A java game that's essentially a cross-platform port. Doesn't sound promising, does it? Yet UniWar confounds the sceptics by being, in Ewan's words, 'faultless'. Whether playing alone or in online multi-player mode, the game looks great and has all the options and gameplay mechanics needed. Now available in the Ovi Store for both S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition phones, here's the full UniWar review here on our Ovi Gaming site
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In his latest Ovi Gaming review, Ewan takes to the skies in Polarbit's strangely realistic WW2 aviation shoot 'em up. With Armageddon Squadron often being sighted in the Ovi Store for free, this is definitely one to snap up, even if you'll need decent flying skills and plenty of patience to progress all the way to the end.
What's super-simple to understand, super-addictive to play and available right now in the Ovi Store? Phit Droid is the answer and has been giving Ewan some serious puzzling fun on his recent travels. The only negative is the unpolished opening menu, but otherwise it's positives all the way in this 80%-scored review here on AAS's Ovi Gaming.
Here on our Ovi Gaming sister site, Ewan tries out Columns with a Twist - Explode sees you rotating the world around you in order to direct gravity itself to lining up balls in the playing area. Don't worry, the screenshots will give you more of an idea. Ultimately, Explode is rather spoilt by unnecessarily amateurish touchscreen controls - we're hoping the developers perservere and tune the game a little more.
Published by Nokia and developed by Rovio, Space Impact Meteor Shield is a Star-Wars-style 360 degree gun turret game, for real. Using the Nokia N97's digital compass the virtual world spins with you - play it in a swivel chair for best effect. The game is a great demo of what's possible and is currently free in the Ovi Store. Links and screens below.
Tower Defense games are popular on Flash web sites, but can Digital Chocolate, in the Nokia Ovi Store, use their Java programming wizardry to bring a tiny battle to your smartphone screen? Ewan dons his peaked cap to find out, in our Ovi Gaming Dictator Defense review.
Forgive the plug, but I haven't mentioned Phones Show Chat for a few weeks - audio podcasts 24 and 25 are now online for your listening pleasure - around an hour each of myself and Tim Salmon of this parish wittering about Symbian, Maemo and Android smartphones, answering Q&A, and so on. Here's the RSS feed for you to plug into Podcasting, to subscribe, if you haven't done so already 8-)
The Par 3 Golf marque has been established in first the Java and Windows Mobile worlds, and then the iPhone world, for some time, but the ante has been upped by this latest revamp/rename, with more holes, more courses and, in theory, more fun. It's value for money, but it's strictly a bare-bones golf game, with few frills or frolics. And judging from this, my Ovi Gaming review, Par 72 Golf II isn't going to challenge the serious golf games of the handheld world.
Here on our Ovi Gaming site, Ewan takes a look at the latest incarnation of Zingmagic's Enigma, for S60 5th Edition smartphones, straight from the Ovi Store. You'll know the game as 'Mastermind', no doubt, from the board game, but this phone version adds significant extra layers of difficulty. Forget 'Brain Training', just play this each morning and you're good to go!
Released for free yesterday (in theory, for a limited period, though as you'll see from the review, it wouldn't work that well as a commercial title anyway), Ovi Maps Racing is a Maps-derived top-down racing game from Nokia. Ewan's been giving it the review once-over here on Ovi Gaming and, while, generally impressed by the title, feels it's let down by the lack of an integrated track sharing system and by the ultimately limited gameplay.
