N.O.V.A. 3: Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance Now Available On Android [Download Now]

Earlier this month Gameloft launched the third installment of its landmark mobile FPS series, N.O.V.A. 3 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. For those of you who don’t own an Apple mobile device on par with theiPhone 3GS or newer, N.O.V.A. 3 is now available on Android devices.

From its description and screenshots, it seems that N.O.V.A. 3 for Android is the same game that launched on the iTunes Store early last month. While Gameloft‘s games tend to be derivative knockoffs of console favorites, they also provide hardcore gaming experiences on devices that major studios treat as a secondary market at best. (Here’s a fun activity: See if you can spot the inspiration for titles such as Modern Combat 3, Urban Crime, and Diamond Twister.) N.O.V.A. 3 is a console style first person shooter, and features the level of graphical eye-candy that was, until recently, only available in consoles and on gaming rigs.

N.O.V.A. 3 features 12 player matches, the match types you’d expect from a shooter (such as king of the hill, deathmatch, and capture the plag), a ten level story mode, new weapons and powers, and the newly introduced ability to share vehicles with allies in multiplayer.

In the Google Play market N.O.V.A 3 currently has an average rating of 4.3 stars from a total of 113 reviews. N.O.V.A. 3 requires 2GB of free memory to install and Android 2.2 and up. Be warned that N.O.V.A. 3 currently seems to have compatibility issues with certain devices (ah, the joys of hardware fragmentation), such as the HTC Evo. Hopefully this issue will be patched soon.

Download N.O.V.A 3 for Android – $6.99 [Google Play Link]