The N810 might not be the perfect power-gamer device, as there are no keys directly available (if you don’t slide out the keyboard) but it is perfectly fit for the casual gamer.

The Games

The games that came included on the N810 are Marbles, Mahjong, Blocks (a Tetris game) and Chess. I confess, I was never close to good with Chess (that’s probably why my plans to overtake the world haven’t succeeded yet), but I am a good game player, in general.

The biggest surprise to me was that Marbles game. I loved it! When I am hooked on a game, I tend to keep playing it until i reach the last stage, and that’s what I did with Marbles. I finished all levels and felt like I wanted some more. I confess, some levels were hard as hell, but some were too easy.

After finishing Marbles, I decided I charged at Mahjong. If you have ever played Mahjong, you’ll find yourself in common territory. There are 8 boards, and you have the possibility to look for hints, and even shuffle the pieces on the board when you reach a dead-end, except that both will cost you time. The game grows on you and it’s probably the one I played most. I don’t know why but I ended up trying to get all my board times under 4 minutes. Silly goal, but I managed it. My friend who had never played Mahjong, but has the “gamer” spirit, fell immediately for it and ended up looking for a Mahjong game on her desktop.

The third game, Blocks, was a huge letdown for me. I am a big fan of Tetris, ever since those old Atari consoles that I had when I was 9 or 10 years old. Except that I found it hard to enjoy Blocks on the N810. You can control the bricks with the pen but that doesn’t give a very precise feedback and I always ended putting down the bricks at the wrong place. The best way to control it is with the directional keys, which are located on the slide-out qwerty: you have to open the slide to access them, plus the left key (which is the up key when you’re using the tablet in normal mode) is so close to the lid, it’s a pain to reach it. Basically, the experience wasn’t comfortable and I ended up ditching that game after 2 minutes.

The Other Games

I downloaded a couple of other games for the IT:MaemoSweeper, Battle Gweled, Maemodrac, Sudoku, Maemo Mind, Bomberman and Icebreaker. I really enjoyed MaemoSweeper and found Battle Gweled ok, the others were too minimalistic. There are more games that I didn’t have time to try, like shooter games (a port of Quake) and a Gameboy emulator, but I am not a big fan of those. The game developer community is growing by the second, so it should be exciting to see what they come up with next.

Overall

The N810 stood out for its out of the box gaming experience. It sure is aimed at casual board games and works well for them. Don’t expect to be playing Need For Speed or Fifa on this one, but expect to have fun discovering other games. Playing is very comfortable: you can kick the desk stand out and use it to hold the N810 with your hand, play with the other. Plus for many games, you won’t likely need the stylus: your finger would do.

What Needs Improvement

1. I would love to see a better Blocks game. I don’t know how they could pull it off with the current device layout, but it doesn’t make sense right now.
2. Games I would like to see on the N810: a better Sudoku (with levels and difficulties), Kakuro, Domino, Pinball, Scrabble, and much more than just a silly solitaire implementation in the cards game department. These would make a lot of happy users.

Categories: Reviews
Tags: Features, games, n810