Over on Ovi Gaming we've reviewed five games which all retail on Ovi Store for €3 each: excellent surreal racing game Sheep Mania Barnyard Dash, relationship simulator Date Or Ditch, online Scrabble clone Lexulous (formerly known as Scrabulous), Lancashire's finest in Wallace & Gromit Adventures, and the return of the blue hedgehog in Sonic Unleashed. As usual we've included gameplay videos and screenshots along with brief remarks on all aspects of the games.
What comes after Sudoku? How about KenKen, asks Ewan, as he looks at another Japanese number grid-based puzzle game. Adding elements of real mathematics into the puzzle makes it quite a bit more challenging to the ol' grey matter.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've taken a look at four touchscreen-based budget titles available for €2 each: crazy golf simulator Pirates Cove Mini-Golf, GClue's adaptation of Reversi/Othello, puzzler Electric Beams Touch and reaction timer Speed Tester Touch. There are also gameplay videos and screenshots of all four alongside the reviews.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've reviewed six games that are available in Ovi Store for one euro each: African board game Mancala Touch, Japanese-themed arcade game Go Sushi, turn-based puzzler Octopuzzle Deluxe, computer classic Mine Sweeper Touch, geographical tutor Flags Trivia and foreign vocabulary builder Dictiomania.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've recently been doing some reviews and videos of cheap, simple touch-based Ovi Store games for S60 5th Edition devices. Touch Card Match is a colourful version of memory, Spin The Bottle Touch is an underwhelming bottle-spinning simulator, Chessboard Touch lets two people turn a phone into a timed chess board, and Freecell Touch is a no-frills ultracheap version of the classic card game.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've been reviewing and videoing some freeware touchscreen titles for S60 5th Edition devices: Speedtouch is a minimalist but fun whackamole clone, Bubbles Touch is rather poor (in fact it gets our lowest score ever), and Fridge Magnets Touch turns your phone into a ouija board thanks to its internet connection.
Zum Zum is a lovely mix of arcade action and Tetris-like clearing strategy. While it's been done on countless platforms before, this version of the genre game Zuma, according to Ewan Spence, doesn't make any mistakes in providing a good conversion to the S60 platform.
We've teamed up with Nokia N-Gage to give away a Nokia N96, a license for the N-Gage game Million Dollar Poker and a few Nokia goodies. All you need to do is answer a simple question and give us your name and contact details. Million Dollar Poker is the most recently released N-Gage game.
Spin the numbers around the carousel, add in a Sudoku grid and a touch of frustration, and you have a new puzzle game. Will Rotoku, new in the Nokia Ovi Store, be enough to satisfy Ewan?
Believe it or not, Million Dollar Poker is the third poker game on N-Gage, distinguishing itself this time round with true multiplayer action. Ewan seemed moderately impressed, but rightly berates Gameloft for making the trial version insanely short and for including truly lack lustre graphics throughout. Here's the Ovi Gaming review of Million Dollar Poker.
AMF Bowling: Pinbusters is the latest N-Gage game on the block and Ewan takes it for a roll. Despite a sensible control system, decent graphics and (shock, horror) support for multi-player gaming over the N-Gage Arena, Ewan brands it 'repetitive' and 'ultimately unfulfilling'. Still, at least there's a single-player demo, right?
Almost sixty official games graced the original N-Gage platform, so why aren't Nokia taking the proven hits from that era and bringing them back to the front? Here on Ovi Gaming, Ewan looks back and chooses five that are ripe for re-invention. Why not take a trip down memory lane with him and then ask Nokia very, very nicely...?
"Oh dear. Spore as a gaming brand is close to a legend. Created by Will Wright, and released last year to great critical acclaim, you'd think that popping the genetic engineering life-sim onto a mobile would be a sure-fire hit. Err, no." And so begins Ewan's review of this latest N-Gage title here on Ovi Gaming. Spore Origins includes all the elements needed but fails miserably in its basic gameplay and interface.
EA's mobile phone version of the classic board game Cluedo (aka Clue in some parts of the world) rejigs the traditional gameplay into a limited-turn logic puzzle game with an extremely slick graphical interface. Ovi Gaming has reviewed Cluedo for Ovi Store, and we also provide our usual gameplay video and selection of screenshots.
Promised some time ago, N-Gage games have finally been made available through Ovi Store, in the form of free trials which can be unlocked into full versions through an in-game purchase or rental option. Although Ovi Store and N-Gage remain separate brands right now, it might make sense for Nokia to merge them, as discussed below.