Hulk smash!!! Or in this case a giant panda, as Ewan takes a look at the B-movie-inspired Mega Monsters from Nokia on N-Gage. It's a stomping, rip-roaring rampage through the city, either against miniature opponents or against these plus the clock/another online opponent. And it all hangs together rather well, rounding off what has been a relatively good week for N-Gage.
Electronic Arts PGA Tour series of golf games dates back to 1990 - which should give this latest mobile incarnation some pedigree in terms of gameplay. But how well does it all work on the phone, how much (or how little) has been done for the official N-Gage incarnation, and how does it compare both to the Java version and to the established Pro Series Golf for N-Gage? Find out in my Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 review here on AAS's Ovi Gaming.
At first I thought it was just me. But all week, trying to view the N-Gage 'All games' catalog in the on-device client has resulted in an error message 'Out of internal memory. Close some applications and try again (Error -4)'. Not terribly helpful, especially on an (e.g.) N96 with 80MB of free RAM and now verified on numerous other devices. What's clearly happened is that adding the latest game to the online catalog has broken some internal limit within the client ("How many games shall we allow for in our array? Pick a number..."), but it's a crying shame that such an error has been allowed to exist for so long, especially around the launch dates of three new titles.
In the best traditions of the swinging 1940's hero with a Fedora, Dirk Dagger is back on the N-Gage in “Dirk Dagger and the Nuclear Zeppelin.” Ewan reviews this over on our OviGaming.com and concludes that, while 'on rails', it still provides quality entertainment for casual gamers.
Ewan revs up his bike and roars out onto the circuits of Ducati Moto, the latest N-Gage title. Unfortunately, despite largely competent graphics and a full complement of features, the gameplay's way too easy, the bike handling is on rails and there are graphical glitches. Which is, yet again, a shame for N-Gage. Over on Ovi Gaming, Ewan wonders if anyone actually play-tested the title and I have to agree.
Over on OviGaming.com, Ewan feels his doubts about Nokia's N-Gage games platform starting to emerge once again. Can N-Gage stay off the iceberg? Read Ewan's say and then have yours in the OviGaming story comments!
Another N-Gage game review on our sister site: OviGaming.com - Ewan plays through Tomb Raider: Underworld and pronounces it very disappointing, with on-rails gameplay throughout and with many of the puzzles and features from previous incarnations removed.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've sighted the first video of a hardware-accelerated version of Bounce (on the N900), and reviewed a selection of games from Ovi Store for the 5800 and N95. See below for links.
Tzer2 goes all provocative in a piece on our sister site, OviGaming.com, asking what on earth Nokia are up to with their games strategy. On the one hand, with parts of the ecosystem stalling and people leaving, on the other with new initiatives, URLs and game titles. It does seem a mystery, so get involved with the discussion.
More updates from Nokia (although there seem to be more betas than Google to be honest!) as Ovi Suite 2.0 receives an updated beta. It now includes support for installing applications on your smartphone via .jar or .sisx files on your PC, better use of memory and various tweaks and fixes to the syncing of photos and music.
Lara Croft has returned to N-Gage in Tomb Raider: Underworld. This time the aim of the game is to retrieve Thor's Hammer. Tomb Raider was one of the more popular N-Gage classic games, and this new version has a similar style. But in contrast to the original version, which was a full port of the classic version of the game, Underworld is a simple N-Gage port of a limited Symbian version of the Underworld game which was released last year. Oh dear.
More stylophone, less guitar. Guitar Hero World Tour feels like a re-union of The Flying Pickets for Ewan. With limited graphics and Java-quality MIDI music, and without a plastic accessory in sight, this Ovi Store title is more 'cash in' than 'rockin'. Here's the All About Symbian review.
As it's the weekend we've got a round-up of eight new game reviews over on Ovi Gaming, as well as a few other features. Following our new format, the reviews are brief but include long gameplay videos and lots of screenshots, to give an idea of what the game is really like. All the relevant links are below...
The Ovi Store application is available on quite a number of Nokia phones, including the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. We've done a brief video (embedded below) which shows how to find and install Ovi Store on the Nokia 5800, either through the "Download!" icon or by visiting the Ovi Store website on the phone's browser. You may also be interested in our videos on how to install Ovi Store on the Nokia N95, and how to use the Ovi Store application.
Over on Ovi Gaming, Ewan Spence has been putting Nokia's exclusive music game Dance Fabulous through its paces, and apparently it is rather good... The game was developed for Nokia by Digital Legends, the same people who did the excellent fighting game ONE, and features exclusive new music created by Dave Stewart (of the Eurythmics) and Cindy Gomez. You can also use your own music if you prefer.