Tikkabik

Let me emphasize this to make sure you understand: In order to change games for the N-Gage, you have to remove the fucking battery. That's just SO convenient to do when you're on a bus or a subway train someplace, jowl to jowl with dozens of other commuters.

It's the mother of all bad design decisions, almost Microsoftian in its cluelessness about basic user friendliness. Not to mention that as a phone, the N-Gage is about as comfortable as holding a brick to the side of your head. It's shaped like a brick, for that matter.

What pissed me off the most was not that Nokia hasn't a fucking clue and that the N-Gage is destined to die the death of a thousand knives, which it totally deserves. It's that journos are fucking clueless.

Certainly, game journos get it. But general interest ones do not. As I'm staring skeptically at this thing and patiently explaining to the guy that my own Nokia 3360 is perfectly serviceable as a phone and my 10-year-old Game Gear plays games a shitload better than this crapbox, and asking rhetorically why, for the love of god, would I want something twice as big as my phone that can't play games worth for shit, this guy from the Paducah Sentinel-Courant or some such shit is staring rhapsodically over my shoulder, eyes big as saucers.

I notice a dark stain spreading on the crotch of his chinos as the Nokia dude tells this comb-over victim with severe halitosis from some nameless flyover state about the phone. His head shakes in awe and wonder as he learns that the N-Gage can play games, and MP3s, and, glory be, is a phone too. Will the wonders of the modern age never cease?

Give me a break.