Pathway to Glory Hands-On Impressions

We had the opportunity to play a quick Bluetooth multiplayer Pathway match at Nokia's E3 booth, and the gameplay lives up to the hype. Maneuvering your soldiers using the D pad cursor is seamless, and the AI works overtime to guard your flanks--assuming you've left enough action points for it to do so. We were also struck by the graphical acuity of the game. Pathway is by far the most visually striking of the N-Gage titles we've seen; the sprites are incredibly detailed, down to the markings on the vehicles. This isn't the easiest game in the world to pick up, however. The demo version we played had many of its controls disabled, and it still took a developer hovering over our shoulders and directing us for us to get the hang of the system. They told us that the one-player scenarios were designed to acclimate players to the controls and teach them the gameplay; the real competition will be online over N-Gage Arena.

Pathway to Glory is being promised for a release "well before Christmas" in the US market. Check out our new screenshots in the meantime.