In All About Symbian Insight 106 (AAS Podcast 170), Rafe, Ewan and Steve look back on Mobile World Congress 2010. Rafe shares his views on a number of subjects including the Symbian Foundation news, Nokia's software strategy (Symbian and MeeGo) and the Qt developer story, Windows Phone 7 Series and more. Steve and Ewan manage to communicate some of their views too and fire a few rapid fire questions at Rafe. You can listen to AAS Insight 106 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
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.
Ewan takes another trip down memory lane here on our Ovi Gaming site with a review of Time Riders 2, a Java vertical shoot 'em up from the Nokia Ovi Store that (somewhat surprisingly) impresses hugely, being responsive and pretty. Oh, yes, and cheap, at a true pocket money price. Hit!
There's a certain swashbuckling look to this game, from Electronic Arts. With a chisel-jawed hero and the 'exciting adventure' font on display (plus the all important sequel number), this has all the hallmarks and subtle signals of a Hollywood blockbuster from the 1950s. Which, of course, is an age ago in the motion picture, and is the perfect metaphor for Jewel Quest 3, finds Ewan Spence.
Well known, cross-platform, games developer Polarbit has, for a limited time only, made four of its games titles available on Ovi Store for free. (previously £3). Raging Thunder, a car racing game, is available for both some S60 3rd Edition (E72) and S60 5th Edition (5800, N97 etc.) devices. Wave Blazer (power boat racing), Armageddon Squadron (arcade flight sim / shooter) and ToonWarz (3D first person Shooter) are available for S60 5th Edition only.
When is a game not a game? When it's more an online proof of concept, as Ewan found out in his review of Smart Trivia from the Ovi Store, with barebones interface and enforced cellular connection. At least the questions themselves are OK, plus there is multi-player action. Can Smart Trivia go for gold or will it fail the starter for ten?
In All About Symbian Insight 93 (AAS Podcast 157) we discuss the Q3 smartphone figures from Canalys and Rafe explains that Fujitsu and Quic have joined the board of the Symbian Foundation. We move on to a retrospective of SEE 2009 with discussion of the media reaction (which send Rafe into rant mode). We finish with thoughts on N97 PR 2.0 and the closure of N-Gage (sniff). You can listen to AAS Insight 93 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
In a low key announcement, via the N-Gage blog, comes the news that Nokia plans to shutter its N-Gage gaming service. Nokia say they will 'no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform'; instead games will be provided via its Ovi Store service. Current N-Gage games can be purchased until September 2010 and the N-Gage website and Arena service (online elements) will be available throughout 2010.
Just popped up in the Nokia Ovi Store are two new, free ZingMagic games, both based in the same genre. 'Alpha WordSearch' and 'Starts with WordSearch' are free to play, with no restrictions, I've included some screenshots below. There are also a batch of six new themed, bigger Word Searches, available as commercial titles. Details below.
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.
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.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've been reviewing lots more games, we have another batch of Ovi Store client installation walkthroughs, and we'd like to know which games you want us to review. See below for a complete list of links...
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...
Over on Ovi Gaming we've been lamenting the rather poor service provided by Ovi Store's search function. However, instead of just complaining about it we've set up an alternative unofficial Ovi Store search using Google's Custom Search Engine. You can try Unofficial Ovi Store Search over on Ovi Gaming. This is still very experimental, so let us know what you think in the comments thread.
