Nokia, Ovi and N-Gage from a Gaming Perspective

Nokia, like all mobile platform makers, has developed an app store for their phones. But from a gaming standpoint they have two different platforms, Ovi and N-Gage.

Now N-Gage is not the old gaming device. It’s their semi-social gaming service that offers up premium titles while Ovi will have more games with less recognizable names.

Games on the Ovi store vary widely in price from free to £5 for Premium Sudoku. I know what you’re thinking about that, £5 for Sudoku is ridiculous and honestly, I have to agree. But those are the ’non-premium’ titles. I was told some time ago that N-Gage would remain the main premium gaming service for Nokia and Ovi would be the, other games. Checking the prices on N-Gage I found the games are mostly about £6.00. But they also have an interesting feature which lets you buy the game for one day at £1.50.

Now I don’t know that I would do that when there’s a free trial available. It seems like a waste of money altogether. The games that you find on the N-Gage service are recognizable names like Tomb Raider, The Sims, Spore, Tiger Woods, Prince of Persia, etc. While the games on Ovi are more generic, clones of more recognizable names (like Tetris) and lots of ports of Flash-based casual games.

Frankly, some of the games are just awful. The port of Tower Bloxx is so clunky control-wise and chunky graphically that I was disgusted by it. It’s such a good game on XBLA and then such a terrible version on the mobile phone, I was rather shocked. Of course, this is the platform that has a Spin the Bottle ’Game’.

From a controls standpoint the Nokia N97 Mini has both a touch screen and a full side sliding keyboard. Along with that there’s also a magnetometer, accelerometer, proximity sensor and GPS as well as two cameras. This all adds up to some amazing gaming potential, that is when they start making games that utilize all of it. Many games are still limited to the touch screen or it and basic keyboard controls. However, Nokia is making some interesting games that are starting to utilize more of what today’s phones are packing. I’ll have some further reviews of those titles in the future including Meteor Storm, Ovi Maps racing and more.