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As part of my recently aquired N81 I’ve been given the chance to use N-gage First Access. Basically, it’s a soft launch by Nokia to test if the service works, and N81 users are the first ones to try it out. Hey, gotta give them something, right?

Now, some of you readers may not be aware but N-gage has hand a rather long and chequered history. To explain, I shall out on my teachers gown, walk over to the blackboard, and we’ll have a little history lesson…

Back in 2003 I was working at a large UK phone retailer when news came through of Nokia launching gaming handsets. As a long time avid gamer, I was amazingly happy. I’ve never liked mobile games so the idea of a platform being designed by Nokia as a direct attempt to lure gamers away from the Nintendo Gameboy got me all excited in a way that only Jessica Alba can manage.

Unfortunately, it never really worked out did it? There were many reason behind this, but there were two main ones; the games were crap and the handsets were complete dogs. For those who don’t remember the original N-gage handsets, they were some of the worst designed pieces of equipment to emerge from Nokias design studios. The original N-gage was the worst of the two.

Look at it. It’s horrendous. There are so many design issues with it, it’s hard to know where to start. To put a game in it, you had to remove the cover, then the battery and then stick the bugger in so you hate to wait for a full reboot every time you wanted to play something. Second, the earpiece and microphone were located on the side of the device, which basically looked like you were chatting away into a high-tech taco. It also made you look like a gigantic tool.

The screen orintation was vertically based as opposed to a video-game standard of horizontal which made for some god awful game ports. I seem to remember a Sonic the Hedgehod game that the developers plastered a big black letterbox over to try and give the impression of a standard screen layout rather than actually do a good job of it. It stunk of laziness.

Basically it bombed and it bombed badly. I seem to remember we sold a grand total of 4 in the first 6 months of it’s launch. 6 months is actually quite a crucial point in time for the N-gage, because it was at this point that Nokia scrapped the original ‘Classic’ model, and replaced it with the N-gage QD.

Yes it was smaller and lighter. No, you didn’t have to take the blasted thing apart to put a game in now, as Nokia had put a handy little hot swap card slot on it. And thankfully yes, the earpiece was now shifted round the front so you weren’t laughed at as you strolled down the street. But was it any better? No, cos the most important thing about a gaming console was still flawed. The games were crap. Most developers were scared off by the utter epic failure of the original N-gage and (wisely) backed off.

Another reason why I think it didn’t do too well is because it ran the Symbian S60 platform. Smartphones were simply not as desirable back then to the general public, who didn’t understand the posibilities of what they owned and lets face it, stick and S60 handset in front of the general public and they’ll look blankly at it for quite a while.

Rumours abound for quite a while that N-gage wasn’t totally dead in the water, and over time a couple of very interesting concepts were thrown about, including this one here.

Still I was massively reticent. It died on its arse last time, why on earth would things be better this time round? Also, here’s another small issue; I hate mobile games. I very rarely will find one I want to put any time into, I always think they’re shoddy, rushed out cash-ins of existing franchies and it’s only very rare something that will come along to change my mind.

The answer came to be when I attended the Go: Play event down in London last year. N-gage was to be relaunched as a service, not as a new device. I was massively impressed, and you can read my thoughts here. However, it was due to launch in November, and then oput back to December and I start to lose a bit of faith in the whole thing.

Still here we are now, and I’ve had a few weeks to play about with it. Here’s my walkthrough of N-gage 2.0.

When you boot up, here is your home screen. It shows the game you played last as your first link, then moving down you have Track Your Progress which shows your N-gage points (read Achievement Points), your rep and how many friends you have. Further down still is a Play With Friends link, a Featured Game link (advertisement) and finally a display to show if you have any new messages.

Moving to the right gives you a complete list of the games that you’ve got downloaded, plus an option down the bottom end to ‘Get More Games’.

To the right again shows your friends list. Mine is rather bare, so I’m not going to show a picture of that out of crucifying embarrassment. Right again still shows a list of showcased games, ie games you haven’t bought yet.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s Xbox Live but on your phone. That’s totally fine by me. Xbox Live is the best online gaming service but a long way, so Nokia have copied straight from the best.

I do have certain issues with the stability of the app though. For a starter it kindly decided to forget my password meaning I can no longer actually log in. Second, there’s sometimes some quite odd shifts in resolution and orientation when you switch from the app to the game.

On a plus side though, there’s some nifty little touches. The games all have an option in the pause menu for you to remain in the game but load up the N-gage app. While not massively useful at this stage, I expect when you’re adding friends constantly and recieving messages for you to play with others this will come in very handy. Also, hitting the menu key mid game automatically pauses it, meaning you can easily use the other important functions on your phone without worryinng about getting killed off mid-level.

That’s the app pretty much covered, so lets now look at the thing that will make N-gage succeed or fail. Let’s face it, you can make this as pretty as you want, but the games are going to be what it’s all about.

We’ll start off with Creatures of the Deep. I can’t say a fishing game, or fishing itself, has ever appealed to me at all. Yet somehow, I find this strangely addictive. It’s a very simple premise. You start off in your little boat on a top down map, sail around till you find somewhere you want to fish. The game then switches to a mock-3D representation of a first person view. You cast away by pressing the 5 key (or one of the gaming keys if you’re in horizontal mode) twice, once to start the power meter and again to stop it. Casting at maximum power earns you 10 XP points. Repeated casting at full strength earns you more XP in multiples in 10.

Once you casted off, you lie in wait of a bite. When it happens, a little icon flashes up on the screen telling you to press the button. If the bite sticks, a two bars appear at the top. One shows the distance you are from the fish and the other shows the tension on the line. You need to pull the fish towards yourself by holding down the action key. However, hold too long and the tension will cause the line to break. You have to strike a fine balance between reeling in your catch and making sure you’re not reeling too hard. Sounds easy and it is really, but you’ll end up snapping a few lines in your time.

XP seems to be the aim of the game really. Earning XP means you can buy new equipment and unlock new levels. New equipment means you can catch bigger fish, and the bigger the fish the more XP you earn. It actually takes a hell of a long time to level up when you start to reach the later levels, something that may put off people in the long term. However it is a game that rewards patience, much like the sport itself. Did I just call fishing a sport? Man, I’m getting old.

Graphically, the top down sections are nothing special at all. I would love to show you pics, bt Screenshot doesn’t seem to work right with the N-gage app. 3D mode is quite good really for a mobile device. However, the N81 doesn’t have the 3D graphic accelerator chip unlike the high end Nseries devices so I’d be really interested to see how this looks on one of those devices.

VERDICT : Oddly addictive, if slightly tedious.

Next off is Block Breaker Deluxe.

Now it’s pretty hard to say anything interesting about this game, because it’s Block Breaker. Everyone’s played it in some incarnation. If you are one of the two people who haven’t played it, let me explain. You have a little paddle at the bottle of the screen and above you blocks appear in various patterns. A ball is then knocked from the paddle to the blocks and visa-versa. When the ball hits the blocks they break, although some blocks take repeated hits to break.

When you destroy a block, sometimes a power up or powerdown will fall down the screen. Power ups include larger paddles, multiballs and superballs which break through all blocks in their path and do not bounce back until they hit the top wall. Power downs include things such as a smaller paddle, which at times can make the game very difficult.

I like games such as Block Breaker, I always have, but they’ve done one of those very annoying things that game developers do sometimes, which is they’ve taken a very simple game and tried to fit some form of story mode in there. I say ’some form’ simply because every time I’ve played it I’ve not bothered to read any of the things that flick up on the screen. God dammit, I’m playing Block Breaker, I just want to break blocks.

Graphically the game isn’t anything special but it must be quite hard to spruce up such a simplistic thing. It’s a bit too garish for my liking though, with lots of neon pinks on the screen.

VERDICT : Mildly diverting fun, but doesn’t show off N-gage anywhere near enough.

We’ll move on System Rush Evolution now.

N95 users will remember this game as it came as a demo on the handset. It was actually pretty crap and didn’t seem to have any point, it was just a looped track. When I saw it was installed on the N81 I wasn’t overly bothered. In fact, it took me a good week or so to actually load it up and have a go.

I soon realised that this was a vastly improved version of the demo. The game hinges round a story of you being a hacker who is being framed for a crime you didn’t commit. You pick your little ship, called a Covec and it starts from there. You enter a fully 3D world, in which you can move through a full 360 degrees around.

There’s a quite a good variation in level types, from standard times laps around a course to missions in which you have to destroy and certain enemy. Also as you progress through the levels there’s quite a few changes to the level colours etc to keep things fresh.

The most impressive thing about System Rush is the speed it runs and the graphics. It hurtles along at quite a little pace and suffers very little dropped frames when the screen has quite a few things going on. Also, it looks great. OK, so it’s realistically only a bunch of polygons, but we’re talking on a mobile phone here.

The big problem though is that I can’t really see a lot of repeat play value. I think when you’ve played it through one, that’ll be it and you’ll only go back to show it off to other people.

VERDICT : Looks great but needs more work to become a must have. I’ve got high hopes for a sequel.

Last game that comes pre-installed is Space Impact Kappa Base. And there’s a good reason why I saved this for last…

Quite simply, I think this game is great. I apologies for the screen shots in advance here. For whatever reason the Screenshot refuses to take a picture without putting the ‘Saved’ text over the screen, which is a massive shame.

It’s a 2D top down shoot-em-up. Occasionally you get some 3D rendered sprites, but for all intents I’m calling it 2D.

There’s a plot involving your team repelling an attacks by evil enemies intent on taking over the world. You can choose between 3 different characters, none of which seems to make all that much difference to the game apart from slight changes to the plot scenes between levels. You start off with a standard fighter jet which is unique to your character, and then you can upgrade weapons and the ship itself over the course of the game as you score more points. One interesting little part of the game is that it rewards you for taking risks. When the enemies fire at you, you need to get close to the shots they fire at you and this earns you more points on a multiplier system. Different ships can get closer to these shots than others, so you have to learn how close you can get before you’ll get hit.

The game looks gorgeous. The backgrounds are well designed and the sprites look lovely. When they are viewed as a still image you can start to see the problems, but when the game is running at the pace it does fantastic. The action reaches a fever pitch at times, and you’re not sure where you can move in case you end up careering into enemy fire. The bosses as well are very impressive, with fire flying everywhere at all times.

I’ll happily admit, I’ve played this through quite a few times now and I’m totally in love with it. This is an IP that Nokia really should continue with.

VERDICT : Mobile gaming brilliance.

So how would I sum my N-gage experience up? Well it’s very positive and it bodes well for the future. Yes there’s niggles, but we’re still really in a beta stage now, and these will be ironed out in time. The games are obviously not pushing the handsets to the full yet, but that can only be expected at this time in N-gages development. It takes console game developers a long time to hit the heights of a next generation console, and the same should be expected here. Games like ‘ONE’, a fully rendered 3D fighter look set to set the bar very high and I want to see that continued. Are they better than standard mobile games? Well yes, but it think that’s more down to the power of the handsets now and the money Nokia are pumping into the development of the platform. They seem intent on moving into other space that just handsets as Ovi proves and they need to continue to pump that cash in if they want all these extra area to succeed. Also, they need to make sure that the big developers stay onside. Companies like EA will make or break the platform.

All in all though, a very good start. I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes next.