I think I am going to get my copy of Block Breaker Deluxe. Just love that game.

We are live! The games, the devices, and the community are all here for you to finally get your teeth into. The Forums are back up and the new N-Gage application is here.

There will be an official announcement on Monday, but for you, the N-Gage faithful we wanted to let you know were up and running! So come join our moderators in the Forums for our launch party, and start enjoying the next generation of mobile gaming.

Source: N-Gage’s Blog

I am not really a mobile games person as I normally do not play games on my mobile phone. But after playing around with N-Gage for about 1 week, I am kinda addicted to playing games on the N-Gage when I am waiting for someone or I got nothing to do.

In this first impression review, I will do a walkthrough of the N-Gage application came installed in N81, N82 and N95 8GB.

Home Tab

Home Tab

This is first screen that you will see when you launched the N-Gage application. It is also the first tab of the application.

Start Game: The last game that you played can be access straight from here.

Track My Progress: When this item is selected, it will display your N-Gage Points, Reputation and the number of friends that you have. This item is basically a summary of the œMy Profile Tab.

Play With Friends: This item will display your friends profile.

Featured Game: As the item name suggests, the game of the week from Ovi will be display here.

New Messages: This is the place where you can access message like an inbox. When you get a friend request, the request message can be access from there.

My Games Tab

My Games Tab

This tab will simply display all the games (including full and trial games) that you have on your N-Gage. For my beta testing, I have full access to 4 games namely Block Breaker Deluxe, System Rush Evolution, Creatures Of The Deep and Space Impact: Kappa Base. I downloaded 1 trial game which is Tetris. As you can see beside each full version game there will be a level gauge bar which increases if you have gotten more points for that game. If you game is a trial version, the TRIAL word appears instead of the gauge bar.

I would not go into much detail about the games here.

Block Breaker Deluxe is my favorite game among the 3 other games as it is simple and addictive. I might consider buying it once N-Gage is officially available.

System Rush is something like Wipe Out, but I cant seem to find the objective of the games after playing it a few times.

Creatures Of The Deep is my brothers favorite game as it is based on fishing and the graphics is fantastic.

Space Impact: Kappa base is a top view airplane shooting game. This is my 2nd favorite game.

I cant get any screenshots for any games because of the Screenshot Application I am using could not capture a clean shot of any in-game scenes.

My Profile Tab

My Profile Tab

This is your profile page where you can see your own N-Gage points, reputation and number of friends that you have.

When you select on the Offline options, you can change your personal availability status, just like any instant messenger.

Under Gaming History, it will list out the games which you last played in order.

My Profile Tab – Edit Profile

Edit Profile

You are able to edit your profile by clicking on the Option soft key followed by Edit Profile. The screenshots above are pretty self explanatory.

I want to highlight about the feature that I like the most about this application which is the Connection Settings. That is the Preferred Access Point and Alternative Access Point. Most of the time I will be playing games using my home wireless network and hence I set it as my preferred access point. But at times when I am outside and in order to kill some time, I played with my Block Breaker Deluxe. After playing the game, when I want to submit my points to N-Gage, and if the application cant detect my home wireless network, it will automatically use my alternative access point. In this case it is my 3G Data Connection. All is done seamlessly without any irritating popup. I check my log after my points is sent and I found out that it only sent 35KB which is the file size of 1 MMS.

My Friends Tab

My Friends Tab

This tab will show all your friends you have on N-Gage as well as being able to add new friends. I added quite a few other beta testers, but apparently either they did not use N-Gage at all or they did not approve the request.

Showroom Tab

Showroom Tab

From this tab, you are able to see all the games that are available for N-Gage. You can download the trial version and played it for a while or if you like the game, you can always purchase it from here.

Conclusion
I did not play with N-Gage Classic or N-Gage QD before as the design of the phone looks ugly and bulky. But since N-Gage is now platform based, it definitely can reach out to greater audiences. As long as the price is reasonable and the game is of high quality, it will be a success.

When I surveyed my friends, they said they will not pay USD$20.00 for mobile phone games. Pricing is a very tricky issue here.

Links

• Wikipedia: Ovi
• Wikipedia: N-Gage
• Neries WOM World
• Official N-Gage Site

According to the user agreement, the phone will be on loan to me for 2 weeks, but hopefully they can extend it for me as I am still waiting for my Nokia N82 from Nokia Singapore (it has been 3 months, sigh).

The N81 come with 4 fully unlocked games. Space Impact is a plane shooting game, Block Breaker is like Pong, System Rush Evolution is a futuristic racing game (similar to Wipeout). Among all these 4 games, my personal favorite is the Block Breaker. It is quite additive and I am stuck at the 1st boss stage!

Feel free to add me as a friend on N-Gage. My N-Gage profile is 1stGamerz.

I would like to thank Donna from WOM World for selecting me =)

DHL Parcel

DHL Parcel Opened (Bubble Wrap Protecting The Phone)

Nokia N81 8GB

I was not at home when the delivery man came at 11am as I was in school and when I got back home about 9pm, I called the DHL hotline and I am so surprise that a real human answered my call immediately. I always have the impression that those large corporations always use machine voice asking you to press this and press that before you can speak to a real human. While I was on hold with the customer service staff, I heard my door bell ring and when I opened, it was the DHL delivery man! He was making his 2nd attempt delivery for my parcel. Thumbs up to DHL for the excellent service.