Following up the release last week of Dance Fabulous, Nokia and the N-Gage team are offering a 30 day licence on top of the usual free downloadable demo. This will give you the full game, with no playing restrictions. At the end of the 30 days, you can purchase the game in full if you're still getting your kicks from dancing along to your own music collection! Grab your pass at the Dance Fabulous N-Gage site.
AMF Bowling: Pinbusters, a third party games, is out now on the N-Gage platform. It's a ten pin bowling game with various playing modes and 12 characters, each with signature moves. The game also has the ability to post scores to an online leaderboard. To get the game, open your phone's N-Gage application, go to the Showroom tab, select "Options" and then "Update Now".
In All About Symbian Insight 75 (AAS Podcast 135) Steve, Ewan and Rafe discuss the release of the Nokia E72 and 5530 XpressMusic. There's also discussion of the latest Ovi Maps for mobile release, updates fro Rest Generation and early reaction to the N97. The podcast concludes with Rafe sharing his first impressions of the Nokia N86. You can listen to AAS Insight 75 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Gameloft's rather good people simulator and adventure game Paris Nights has been reviewed by Ovi Gaming, and we've also added lots of screenshots as well as a ten minute gameplay video. It might not have the best graphics in the world but it's fun, it's got a fairly grown-up feel to it, there's an interesting plot and it only costs three euros from Ovi Store.
Ovi Store has been updated again, and it seems the latest content push has added about 79 new titles to Ovi as well as more apps and other content. The list of new games is below, and you can see these for yourself by going to store.ovi.com and selecting the "Any Phone" option, then "Games", then "Newest - Oldest" from the drop down menu. By our reckoning Ovi Store has around 350+ different titles now available, with lots more still waiting to be added for various technical reasons. Note that not every game works on every phone, so if you select a particular model on Ovi Store you probably won't see every game on offer. As always, you can find out more about Ovi Store on our Unofficial FAQ page.
One of the seemingly vast number of Java game titles that have been put up by Nokia in their Ovi Store, The Sims 3 doesn't seem too bad - it's playable and well thought out, once you look past the lowest-common-denominator interface. Here's Ewan's Sims 3 review, right here on Ovi Gaming (used to be All About N-Gage).
Nokia's exclusive strategy game Reset Generation was originally made available as a free online game for Windows PCs at resetgeneration.com, and the site has now been revamped to also be compatible with computers running Macintosh OS X and CentOS Linux. If you have a computer running any of these operating systems, all you have to do is visit the site to play the game, it's the full version including four-way online multiplayer and it's totally free. If you also want Reset Generation on your phone, it can be purchased through the N-Gage application. (via The Official N-Gage Blog)
The adventure game Mystery Mania has been reviewed by Ovi Gaming, and we've also done a ten minute gameplay video and lots of screenshots too. We've reviewed it on the Nokia 5800 but it is available for other phones too. You can get it right now from Ovi Store either through the website or the Ovi Store client. (Mystery Mania has been developed for EA by Danish company Progressive Media, who also did the absolutely excellent Sola Rola which won our very rare Mega Game award.)
Nokia's 8 megapixel N86 smartphone is now shipping according to Nokia Press Bulletin Board. Outwardly similar to the N85, the N86 features a slightly redesigned casing, kick stand, non-flat chunky keypad, and of course an 8 megapixel af camera which is the highest resolution on any Nokia device so far. Our camera expert Steve will be examining this hardware in detail of course, but just to give the official specs the N86 has a variable aperture for low-light photography, a fast mechanical shutter and automatic blur reduction. The N86 runs Symbian S60v3 FP2, is compatible with N-Gage and Ovi Store, and comes with 8 gigabytes of on-board memory as well as a separate microSD card slot for extra memory. (via ZOMGitsCJ)
The exclusive first-party music game Dance Fabulous is out now on the N-Gage platform (we all know Nokia never sticks to launch dates, this is two days early!). To get the game, open your phone's N-Gage application, go to the Showroom tab, select "Options" and then "Update Now". The download file is 31 megabytes and the price should be around 5 euros, which is interestingly in line with the average pricing on Ovi Store.
ZingMagic's conversions of board games are legendary and Gomoku Pro 2 doesn't disappoint in our Ovi Gaming review - Ewan's been keeping not one, but two games on the go (moku) simultaneously. Think of it as 'five in a row' for adults. It's a tidy game, with intuitive UI and plenty of customisation options, as you'd expect.
Ovi Store had capacity problems on the day it launched as demand for the service apparently far exceeded Nokia's estimates, but they seem to have cured that and Ovi Store now loads reliably. However, another problem has appeared which is rather annoying and frustrating: some items seem to be disappearing and reappearing at random. All too often people click on a game, app or other content and are greeted with the message "Sorry, this item is no longer available." even when it should be available. Let's take a look at the availability problems one by one, hopefully someone high up at Nokia is reading this.
Another Ovi Store game, this time surreal gather-em-up Java title Katamari Mobile has been reviewed by Ovi Gaming, and wins a Recommended award (the review also includes a 10 minute gameplay video of it running on the 5800 and lots of screenshots too). The mobile version of Katamari is perfect for anyone longing for a return to the simpler days of abstract arcade gameplay, and it also provides a nice slice of unhinged Japanese humour.
Another new batch of games has appeared in Ovi Store, the full list is below. (Incidentally, if anyone from Nokia is reading this, could you please take a look at the Ovi Store servers and find out why some games are constantly appearing and disappearing!) Anyway, on with the new games, you can see them listed below in alphabetical order. Most of the new games seem to be from the publisher Playfon, who are apparently making their Ovi Store debut.
The quirky and charming Java-based arcade puzzle game Go! Go! Rescue Squad! is available in Ovi Store and we've been taking a look at it on the Nokia 5800. To see our review, along with a ten minute gameplay video and lots of screenshots, head on over to the Go! Go! Rescue Squad! game page on Ovi Gaming.