Between the release of God of War 2 and Chains of Olympus there was a smaller adventure for the warrior Kratos in 2007 that explains how he had lost his godly status after he killed Ares in the first game and sets the stage for GoW2. A 2D adventure for the Mobile Phone, compared to most games available for cell phones this game is incredible in graphics and game play, does it stand up to a full blown 2D console release? Of course not but it feels like playing an entirely new God of War on an old 16-bit console.

The graphics are very nicely done for the small screen they are displayed on, with a very nice selection of colors and minute details. The backgrounds however get rather repetitive in design with a change of backdrop between 2-3 levels. Their are about 6 types of enemies and 2 distinct boss characters: Hera’s beast: Argos and Ceryx, the son of Hermes (the final boss). Theirs plenty of the red stuff you’d expect for a God of War game as well.

The sound is well.. what you’d expect for a mobile game. It does feature the God of War theme at the menu but that is the only music featured in this game. The sound effects are few and muffled but this is a mobile game were talking about.

The gameplay is solid though depending on your handset the controls can seem cumbersome, you have direction buttons and one attack button which you can use to attack with a combo. To use the few weapons and magic spells you get in the game, one of the phones soft keys is used. The biggest problem with the controls I noticed is it doesn’t read simultaneous button presses so that at times can cause problems in the heat of battle. The game’s difficulty seemed imbalanced for the first several levels up to the last 3 the enemies were pretty easy but then they seemed to get very hard to kill. As with the games big brothers, when an enemy like the minatour or a boss character has low health you can initiate a “mini-game’ to kill them in a gory fashion via a prompted button press.

Overall this is a very nice mobile game compared to the other poor offerings you find. It definitely lives up to it’s name and if you are a fan of the series or just want a decent mobile action game, I would recommend checking this one out.

Verizon has commissioned branded versions of several popular games under their “VZW” title, with VZW Sudoku being a highlight on the service right now. The game offers just enough features to keep you content with sudoku on the go, and doesn’t break the bank in doing so.

Graphics: 75/100

VZW Sudoku has a Japanese bamboo theme, with kanji letters and Far Eastern looking fonts. The actual sudoku board is clean and clear, with blue numbers forming the pre-sets and black numbers for those you’ve entered yourself.

Gameplay: 80/100

It is easy to enter in digits with the number pad of my phone, which makes playing a breeze. However, there is no support for scribbling those small notes into the corners of the squares, as many people do during a game of Sudoku, so that may be a deal breaker for some. The menus are easy to navigate, and there is support for 10 saved games.

Replay: 95/100

You can easily have the game generate a new game for you, or you can manually enter in a game from a newspaper, book or online.

Overall, for less than $10 you get a quality sudoku experience you can have with you anywhere. I’d recommend this to any Verizon subscribers who enjoy sudoku.

The iPhone has its quirks, but it certainly has made an impact on the mobile phone market by expanding people’s expectations as to what a a cell phone can do. Several years ago Nokia first tried its hand at making a cell phone game device, but a terrible initial design killed all hopes that the N-Gage could succeed, and only scant few titles were released for it. The N-Gage is still around, but it has, for the most part, failed as a standalone device.

But mobile gaming is certainly not a passing fad, as the Nintendo Gameboy and the DS has proven. And cell phone games up until now simply haven’t been able up to the level of Nintendo’s dedicated systems. CNET Crave thinks Nintendo is going to have to enter the mobile phone market at some point, and will be successful whenever they do.

There are some big questions that must be raised, however, namely, what kind of device do you expect people to carry around? A DS would not make a good phone, as the size is just too large to have it in your pocket all the time. But trim that down to a portable mobile-phone size and you start losing what makes the DS so good. Without a large screen and a comfortable form factor, a device would simply not be well-suited to gaming.

If someone can combine playability, portability, low-cost and a good game library all into a single device, it certainly could be successful. It’s only a matter of time until somebody tries again.