Photo taken from SlashPhone
Mobile phone games have until recently always been second rate to me. A few months back though during a bloggers meet, I got the chance to mess around with Nokia’s new nGage service and had quite a bit of fun with it.
The new Nokia nGage service has (thankfully) very little to do with the clunky phone which shares its name. Instead, it is now an online gaming and game delivery platform, and as of now looks like the best way to do some proper gaming on your Nokia.
Very quickly here’s a breakdown of what I liked, and what I didn’t…
The good
- The quality of the games - The current and upcoming library looks very impressive, and I’d say the games really looked so good it was almost like the Playstation1 was ported onto a phone.
- Ease of distribution – The ability to download, demo and buy games directly from the mobile made it easy to get my hands and test any game I wanted.
- Social aspect – Getting users involved means that aside from nGage being a free multiplayer platform, you’ll be able to communicate with other users and rate games as well.
What could be better:
- The ownership system - The fact that the games are tied to your phone and not your user account is a big issue for me. Anyone who loses their phone instantly loses their library of games. Even worse – anyone who UPGRADES their phone, loses their games. Apparently this is being worked on, but no word on timelines as of yet.
- Overall Speed – The overall feel of the system is not as fast as I would like it to be. Currently only the most powerful Nokias are compatible with nGage, and even on my 1st gen n95, things can get sluggish at times.
Anyhow…If you own a compatible Nokia model, and 3G – you’ve got nothing to lose by trying the platform out for free (even if you don’t buy anything the demos are extremely playable :) )
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