Pathway to Glory (N-Gage, 2004)

Yup, N-Gage. No, I’m not kidding. The world’s first gaming phone (it’s not a “handheld console”, but a gaming phone - and it might have been successful if only they had promoted it like that from the start, along with skipping the original sidetalking version and releasing only the QD, even if a few months later) is not only a very good phone, but there are some very good games for it. This one is my particular favorite.

Pathway to Glory is a turn-based tactical game in which you play an Allied squad of soldiers in World War II (you can also play as the Axis in multi-player games, but there’s only an Allied campaign). Soldiers have skills, get promoted, and improve their skills between missions - if they survive, of course. So you tend to get attached to the best ones.

There are several weapons, drivable vehicles (jeeps, tanks, etc.), fixed heavy machine guns, and so on. Scenarios also vary a lot. Your soldiers also talk - acknowledging an order, or when they get shot but don’t die. Each one does so in his native tongue - for example, some of the first missions are in Italy, so expect to hear some Italian as you shoot them.

By now you should have already got the message that, if you like games like Laser Squad or Jagged Alliance, you’ll love this one. But there’s more.

You can play it with other people by Bluetooth, or by going online, using the N-Gage Arena. That means adversaries from all around the world, at any time. Try doing that with a GBA.

I have to mention, too, the fantastic presentation of the game. An introduction with high-quality digitized photos and a cello soundtrack. Great graphics and sounds (including shots, explosions, screams, etc.) throughout the whole game.

This isn’t a small, basic game like most mobile games (especially the Java ones) are. It uses 55MB on the MMC card, so you can see it doesn’t have much to do with a 64K downloadable game…

It’s another sign of an unfair world that most people, due to prejudice against the N-Gage (without knowing jack about it, just from hearsay) will never try out this game…