Three Xbox Live games that were branded as Nokia exclusives for Windows Phone have been made available to all owners of all Windows Phone devices.
Bejeweled Live Plus, Zuma's Revenge, and iBomber Defense, have all been made their way into the Windows Phone Store for general consumption on Windows Phone 7 and 8.
So what are they all about? In our review of Zuma's Revenge, we described the game as thus:
"Zuma is a variation of the match three puzzler in which players control a frog and fire colored balls from his mouth at an oncoming line of balls. If the balls reach a hole at the end of the pathway, you lose a life or fail the level. To stop that, our fearless frog must break some balls. Matching three or more balls with a fired shot of the same color destroys that group of balls. Simple stuff, but there are some deep underlying mechanics as well…"
Meanwhile, Bejewelled Live+ should be familiar to most casual gamers. From our review:
"Bejeweled Live+ puts the first Bejeweled Live to shame. It has way more content and yet costs two dollars less, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the original game gets de-listed whenever Live+ becomes available to non-Nokia users. Heck, Live+ even trumps the recently released Bejeweled Live for Windows 8 as well since that one lacks Lightning and Zen modes."
And finally, iBomber Defense is a unique war strategy game for Windows Phone, bringing quite a bit of fun to the mix. Once again, from our review:
"Alright, so iBomber Defense doesn’t run as well as it should and the Achievements are crazy hard and slow to come by. It’s still my favorite traditional tower defense game (in the Xbox WP lineup) though. The graphics and setting are less flashy than geoDefense, but much more visually interesting. Continuing the comparison, turrets in this game always cost the same amount and have the same stats, unlike geoDefense’s crazy variable stats. iBomber provides a smoother and more cohesive experience."
The three games are all published by Electronic Arts, a long-time maker of Xbox games. We haven't seen any formal announcements, but it looks like it could be part of an agreement between EA and Nokia to get these games to a wider audience after a certain amount of time. We've seen other Nokia-exclusive games like the Mirror's Edge, get released later on after a stint of being offered only to Nokia phone owners, so this is certainly not unprecedented.
The trio of games can still be found in the Nokia Collection on your Nokia phone or in the general population of games.
You can get Bejeweled Live Plus, Zuma's Revenge and iBomber Defense in the Windows Phone Store, each for $2.99.
Thanks for the tip, Er. Akshat!
