Hands On with Paris Hilton and the rest of Gameloft's E3 mobile games

Gameloft is showing off both its casual and hardcore sides at E3.

The latter is best represented by Splinter Cell: Double Agent, the fourth iteration of the console-derived creep-'em-up.

We played the first two levels of the game. The first level sees you trying to break into a prison, and has some marvellous animation on the main character. Meanwhile the second is a James Bond-esque underwater adventure, which has you scuba diving down narrow passages collecting nuclear objects and harpooning enemies. Even from a brief play, the attention to detail sets this apart as a class act.

Meanwhile, Asphalt Urban GT 2 3D is the all-new version of Gameloft's flagship racing game. We had a go on the BREW version, which won't be available over here, and which boasts attention-grabbing 3D graphics and impressive speed. Gameloft told us it's also working on a version for Symbian handsets, which will be released in Europe this summer.

Lumines is the mobile version of the ace PSP puzzler, and from a five-minute bash (which could have easily turned into an hour if we didn't have a gazillion other games to get around to) it seems to have nailed the original's block-dropping gameplay while adding a couple of new features. For example, gems now appear in some blocks, which adds a new dimension to the gameplay. Most importantly, the music – such an essential part of the PSP game – is present and correct, even on lower-spec handsets.

On the casual side, Gameloft is showing off Paris Hilton's Jewel Jam, a puzzle game that's basically Bejeweled (or Columns, if you're an older reader). You swap gems around to make lines of three or more; there's more than 60 levels and six different gameplay modes. It's certainly fun, if rather unoriginal as a concept, and Gameloft is good-naturedly laughing off the inevitable "Is there a Night Vision Filth Mode?" enquiries. Paris herself is turning up on their E3 stand today…

So let's get a move on to conclude with Gameloft's The O.C. game, based on the drippy, sorry, zeitgeist-defining TV series of the same name. You can take control of one of the four main characters from the show or else create your own, and have to make friends and influence people in Newport.

Basically, it's Gameloft's existing New York Nights after a comprehensive revamp. But that's no bad thing from our hands on playtest.