Eurogamer in blog format - Mobile

War's road to redemption begins.

Croteam's high-def update of the PC blasting classic gets a formal release date.

Rock Band gets light-hearted with the minifigs.

Dotnia experiences an expansion into an entirely new dimension.

Wheee! We're suckers for a bit of dog-fighting, especially with those crazy rear-prop driven Japanese planes.

Sneaky tactics and sharp headshots in the sequel to DICE's jolly battlefield romp.

Blood Bowl gets its first new race in the lithe and dangerous form of the Dark Elves.

As an ancient and powerful Umbra witch, Bayonetta has a few handy tricks up her tight sleeves. Here, learn about her flashy, demon-powered killer moves.

Video on demand streaming is coming to the PS3 very soon, with a massive wedge of entertainment waiting at your digital fingertips.

When you're heading into a life or death battle against uncaring robotic overlords, you want to be wearing the right dress.

Ever wanted a zebra-striped AK-47? Of course you have.

The PSP title slips out, somewhat in the shadow of its big brother.

Meet the two opposing forces of the Avatar world, and choose which one you'll be fighting for.

Series creator Chris Taylor discusses his sequel, and what improvements have been made over the original.

Two short CCTV vignettes with those lovable, psychopathic rogues, Kane and Lynch.

Tecmo KOEI offers a first look at Again, a DS game made by Hotel Dusk developer Cing. Story and contenxt are explained in this clip.

A fantastic job of a sequel, building on strengths and addressing weaknesses - AC II hits the shops this Friday.

The perpetually confined simians return in their first balance board title, jonesing for bananas like the dirty little potassium junkies they are.

With social network integration a hot topic, Sony pumps up its Facebook app.

The hub of all starship activity, the bridge is where the important stuff happens. That and engineering, but engineering is far less glamorous and doesn't have the comfy chairs.

Nokia is dumping the N-Gage platform in favour of selling mobile games through the new Ovi Store.

As reported on the company's blog, N-Gage games will be available until October 2010. From then on you'll still be able to play any games you've downloaded, but no new ones will be released and community features will cease to function.

Nokia phones with the N-Gage application pre-installed will still be available to buy "for some time". However, Nokia will no longer ship new devices with the app. Read more...

The brand new Sony Ericsson Aino touch-screen mobile phone allows remote control of PlayStation 3 media, including support for recorded PlayTV content if you live in France, Germany, Italy, Spain or the UK

It works just like the PSP, then, and bosses the bigger console around over local and internet connections.

This is as close as Sony Ericsson can get to integrating the PlayStation brand in their products, having been deemed unworthy of the "prestigious" gaming brand. Read more...

Ngmoco bossman Neil Young has said the iPhone is just as good for playing games on as dedicated handhelds - and even has better graphics.

Speaking at the Game Developers Conference he said, "[iPhone] is a really good device for playing games. Don't let the haters tell you that it sucks relative to the DS and PSP, because it doesn't.

"It's clear already that from a graphics standpoint that the quality of iPhone games is eclipsing its console counterparts," Young continued. "And that's even more acute when you compare and contrast to the prior generation [of mobile games]." Read more...

Ngmoco founder Neil Young has confirmed that two sequels are on the way for iPhone game Rolando.

The first one will be released in June and titled Rolando 2: The Quest for the Golden Orchid. Young said it will be "a whole new game" complete with four worlds, 36 levels and "a bunch of new mechanics and features".

Free level updates will follow, as was the case with the first Rolando game. Then Rolando 3 is planned for release in November - followed by yet more free levels. Read more...

Block-dropping puzzler Topple 2 has launched in the App Store.

The original game was downloaded more than 3 million times (read our review for Eurogamer's verdict).

The sequel introduces four new game modes including Upside-down, which inverts gravity, and Power Tower, where you must construct a power line using conductive blocks. Plus you can take on another player via wi-fi, or exchange ghosts to practice your skills. Read more...

New data from analysts Mobclix shows there are well over 6000 games now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

At the time of writing there are 6276 games on offer, 1516 of which are free to download.

Puzzle games are the most popular genre, accounting for 17.9 per cent of games on the App store, while racing titles only account for 1 per cent. Read more...

Good old Taito has released two new games for the iPhone.

Or rather, two old games. First up is Cooking Mama, which you play using the iPhone's fancy-schmancy accelerometer-based techno-shizzle. It's priced at USD 6.99 (GBP 5 / EUR 5.50).

Then there's Space Invaders. You can play using tilt, drag and touch-screen controls, and there's some bonus character art and so on for those who like that sort of thing. Yours for USD 4.99 (GBP 3.50 / EUR 4). Read more...

At first glance, Reset Generation shares common elements with many other mobile games. The gameplay revolves around falling coloured blocks. The control system is simple, requiring only two buttons and one thumb. The music sounds like it's being banged out on a miniature Commodore 64 by a pixie in a biscuit tin. However, there are two key factors which set Reset Generation apart. Firstly, it hasn't been designed with a casual audience in mind, and secondly, it's not rubbish.

Let's start with the demographic issue; the clue is in the name. On booting up Reset Generation, you're greeted by a princess sporting a pretty pink outfit, big blue eyes and a bouffant blonde hairdo. "We are the Reset Generation," she says, all Peaches and cream. "We grew up with computers and videogames. This is our story."

The opening sequence goes on to introduce some of the game's other characters. These include the Hedgehog (who has blue spikes and a need for speed) and the Plumber (who sports red dungarees and a moustache, but has blonde hair and a thick Russian accent - presumably Nokia's more frightened of Nintendo's lawyers than SEGA's). Other characters include Bomberman clone Dr. Lovebomber, a staff-wielding Level 50 Elf and a woman called Babe Gunner, who boasts twin pistols and giant tits. Read more...

Eidos has decided to close its Manchester studio and focus on creating big game-brands that will make money for years to come.

"As a company we need to focus our efforts on high-quality titles that will deliver long-term franchise value, and in these incredibly challenging and competitive times we need to pro-actively manage our cost base," Eidos told GamesIndustry.biz.

"This decision was a difficult one to make and we would like to thank these employees for their hard work and we wish them well in their future careers." Read more...

Square Enix has released the first snowboarding-themed instalment in the Final Fantasy series.

As reported by Kotaku, it's titled Final Fantasy VII: Snowboarding and has three difficulty levels.

The game costs JPY 315 (GBP 2 / EUR 2.50) and is only available for DoCoMo's FOMA 703i and 902i handsets. Might as well move to Japan then. Read more...

You'd assume that a union of two cultural giants like Square Enix and Apple would be of such earth-shaking significance that it would buckle pavements, bring skyscrapers sighing to the ground, and trigger mass extinctions around the globe. But, as a downloadable iPod game, Song Summoner is not built with posterity in mind. Wisely, it's built with bus journeys in mind instead, and as such it will have to leave the pomp and circumstance for other titles. That's not to say Song Summoner is a bad game - it's actually quite a good one most of the time - but it is, by design, fairly slight, and it's also home to an uneasy mix of the gimmicky and the traditional.

The gimmick first. Song Summoner's big idea is to take the music in your iPod library and transform it into Tune Troopers, fearsome warriors who can then be sent into battle. (Although, in my case, it takes the music in my library and transforms it into a selection of foppish and wheezing weaklings, who slink onto the field of conflict ripe only for dismemberment - serves me right for a lingering fondness for Elastica, presumably.) After you submit a track of your choice, the game uses the music file to generate the class and abilities of your party member, turning Elvis' "Burning Love" into a defensive archer, for example, or yanking an underpowered monk out of Lionel Richie's moronic "Dancing on the Ceiling". The venue where this all takes place is called the Hip-o-Drome, incidentally, which I mention only because it sounds like an intriguing retro-futuristic osteoarthritis clinic, which probably isn't the effect the designers were going for.

With your songs rendered into a broad cross-section of spiky-haired and be-zippered anime cliché, it's time for the more conservative aspects to take centre-stage. Song Summoner is, at heart, an enjoyable but generic strategy RPG. It's broadly cut in the style of Final Fantasy Tactics, but with much of the depth stripped away, by necessity, so it can be played between stops on the Northern Line. So while there are battles to win and a smattering of tactical options available in the turn-based gameplay, there's little in the way of genuine challenge or variety for those who have already peered into the near-bottomless well of a Disgaea or Fire Emblem. Read more...

Id's next mobile game is Doom II RPG, the developer announced at QuakeCon tonight.

After showing off Wolfenstein RPG ("We've put the action-packed fun of kicking Nazi butt onto cell-phone") for mobile phone for a few minutes, Id Mobile's Katherine Anna Kang announced the game.

Nothing was shown apart from a grinning Doomguy. Read more...

That Dexter game we talked about back in March is actually an episodic series for iPod and iPhone.

Marc Ecko who does graffiti and clothes said so at a recent Showtime panel (Showtime is the studio that makes the telly series), according to MTV Multiplayer. And Ecko should know, because his development company is making the game.

Bizarrely, the idea is to get you texting and phoning and gesturing to interact with the Dexter game, although no additional details were given. Read more...

Apple kingpin Steve Jobs has revealed that 160 games will be available from the App Store when it launches in the US today.

Speaking to the NY Times, Jobs let slip that 500 applications in total will be up for download, 160 of which are games. Jobs also stated that 25 per cent of the applications will be free and 90 per cent of the total will be less than USD 9.99. He didn't give specific pricing figures for games.

Our incredible maths skills enable us to calculate that at least some of the games will be less than USD 9.99. Isn't that good? And you thought we were mere creativity engines. Read more...

Nokia has announced that its relaunch of the N-Gage platform will be delayed until December, as it continues to finalise software for the online-enabled service, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

Nokia's new Ovi brand incorporates music, gaming, GPS, photography and other online-enabled features, with the N-Gage functions due to go live this month.

"N-gage is coming in December. Software testing is taking a bit more time than what we had expected," said Kari Tuutti, spokesperson for Nokia, reports Reuters. Read more...