Here on our Ovi Gaming specialist site, Ewan uncovers and reviews Exclusion, a new arcade puzzler from Nokia, released for free in the Ovi Store. A crazy combination of Bejewelled, Life and some Star Wars light sabre slashing title, Exclusion ticks all the boxes, features never-ending, always challenging gameplay, works brilliantly on Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones and seems to thoroughly deserve Ewan's 84% score. Not that the score should matter, given the price, but... hey, just download it, will you?
It used to be just receiving a call, or picking up an email via a push SMS (good old email-to-text gateways back in the nineties). Now, to impress people with your phone in the pub, you need something a little bit better - and it tends to be a game. So what should your Symbian-powered touchscreen smartphone be ready to show off when called into action? Ewan and I run through the Top Ten contenders...
Steve Litchfield dons his flight helmet and heads out to do battle with texture mapped foes in his combat helicopter. Unfortunately, a shoddily implemented game title stands impenetrably in his way. Read on for his Heli Strike review here on Ovi Gaming, but be warned that, despite this being built on a pretty decent 3D engine, this is one Ovi Store game you won't be recommending to your friends....
Our own Ewan Spence is no stranger to casual games on handheld platforms - heck, he's programmed a few himself in the past. Over on our Ovi Gaming site, he reviews Doodle Jump, a quirky new casual arcade game with simple controls. Summary? It's addictive - and surprisingly social - and don't let the fact that it's a port of an iPhone title put you off.
It's your 1990's Tamagotchi taken into 2010 - Creebies sees you looking after the welfare of multiple kritters and their island, with mini-games and a complete 3D virtual environment to wander around. Ewan's rather taken by the title and pronounces it perfect both for casual and long-term gaming here in his Creebies review for our Ovi Gaming site.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to run your own farm? Now you too can be up at the crack of dawn tending to livestock, thanks to Farm Frenzy for S60 5th Edition phones, reviewed here by David Gilson, here on Ovi Gaming. Requiring a healthy degree of mental multitasking and finger dexterity, Farm Frenzy is addictive and definitely one of the better games currently on the Ovi Store.
Looking for the third time (in seven years) at ZingMagic's Bridge title, Ewan reviews the latest "Omar Sharif Bridge 2" for S60 5th Edition and touchscreen phones over on our Ovi Gaming site, revelling in the mature game play and the interface that's now even more intuitive. It's also worth noting that it's a lot cheaper now than it used to be, making it a 'must buy' for Bridge lovers.
A java game that's essentially a cross-platform port. Doesn't sound promising, does it? Yet UniWar confounds the sceptics by being, in Ewan's words, 'faultless'. Whether playing alone or in online multi-player mode, the game looks great and has all the options and gameplay mechanics needed. Now available in the Ovi Store for both S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition phones, here's the full UniWar review here on our Ovi Gaming site
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Spinning a mini-game out of SPB Brain Evolution to form Quads, one has to wonder if the result justifies its existence as a full title - but Ewan seems to think it does. With added extras and gameplay modes, Quads is a lovely combination of luck, strategy and arcade puzzling, as you'll see in his review over on Ovi Gaming.
