The popular social network for mobile gaming, OpenFeint, recently launched for Android-powered phones so I decided to take a look at what this thing that our iOS friends have been experiencing for quite a while now was all about.

There are 8 games launching with Feint support with 5 more promised as “coming soon” as of this writing. The launch games are: . (Dot), Flick Kick Field Goal, Fruit Ninja, MiniSquadron, Super Slyder, Symbolism, The Moron Test and Tic Tac Toe Free. The 5 “coming soon” games are FaceFighter Gold, Flick Kick Football, Flick Kick Rugby, Mega Jump and MUST.EAT.BIRDS.

Hit the jump for my impressions of the service and three of the games.

If you’re interested in finding out what Feint-enabled games are available directly from your phone the first thing you should download is the Feint Games Spotlight app. It’s a simple browsing interface that lists all the available games, a brief description, some screenshots, price and most importantly a link to the App Marketplace to download the game. This app seems like it will be your best place to find Feint games instead of trying to sort through all the apps flooding the normal games market.

The first game I took a look at was one of the free offerings, “.“. (That is, by far, the most confusing thing I’ve ever wrote. I think the grammar is correct.) Henceforth for the rest of the review I’ll refer to the game as “Dot” to avoid confusion. This is a simple phone-tilting game where the object is to gobble up blue dots with your slowly shrinking white dot and avoid the red triangles. If you hit one of the triangles your dot immediately shrinks and starts to accelerate how quickly it shrinks on its own. When your dot shrinks away completely it’s game over. “Dot” keeps track of how many blue dots you eat up and how long you keep your dot alive.

The tilting controls feel a little sticky and since this game is nothing but tilting this poses a slight problem. It’s not all the time but I’ve played other games on my Motorola Droid where tilt controls have worked beautifully. The game itself is usually over pretty quickly. Even if you don’t hit any triangles the game increases the acceleration of the white dot shrinking over time. It’s not uncommon for a round to last around 15 seconds. Occasionally some of the action occurs just off screen, like your dot hitting a triangle that you didn’t even know was there. I guess the idea here is to keep all the action on screen as much as possible. Oddly enough I think my biggest gripe with the game is the utterly unreadable font. You can post your scores to Facebook or Twitter but good luck knowing what that score is or what you might be writing. I actually deleted and reinstalled the app a few times thinking there might have been an error during the installation. Beyond all this the game is certainly challenging, kills time and was the right price: free.

Wanting to see more of what these Feint games had to offer I downloaded Flick Kick Field Goal. As you can probably tell by the title this is a simple, one-fingered game along the lines of Paper Toss or its many variants. With four different modes of play there’s plenty of action to keep your flicking finger of choice busy in short or long bursts.

Practice mode is just that, practice. (Yes, we talkin’ ’bout practice.) Flick the football towards the goal posts as many times as you want, no penalties, no score. Sudden Death is the most basic way to play the game. You start fairly close to the goal and slowly make your way back with each good kick. Miss and you start over. In Arcade you have three chances to make a good kick from a certain distance. Making multiple good kicks in a row gives you a score multiplier and sets your ball on fire (for looks, it has no practical purpose unless they’re trying to remind you of NBA Jam for some odd reason). Lastly Time Attack puts two minutes on the clock and sends you on your way. If you make a kick you’ll get some extra time. Again the distance increases with the more kicks you make. Controls are as good as they could be with a flicking game and the wind doesn’t have as dramatic an affect on the ball as it does in similar games. Well worth the 99 cents to me.

Lastly I took a look at Fruit Ninja, the game that the Feint Game Spotlight app seems highly intent on promoting. This is another game where you run your finger across the screen but instead of flinging a projectile across the screen you spend your time slicing the shit out of fruit (presumably with a Katana). Various fruit are tossed up on to the screen from the bottom floating in to view long enough to run your blade through them and gain points. Some times there’s just one piece, others there are multiple in succession or at the same time. If you miss a piece of fruit you gain a strike and just like in baseball, three strikes and you’re out. Mixed in with the fruit are bombs that instantly end the game when accidentally sliced. Be diligent, young fruit ninja.

This game definitely has a ton of charm and is probably the most addictive of the three that I’ve played. Like any good mobile game you can pick it up and be satisfied playing it for two minutes or two hours. The controls are pretty tight, it looks fantastic and is crazy fun to play. Feint support seems to be most prevalent in this game as well with the ability to manage your friends list, leaderboards and achievements. Achievements!

I like the idea of what OpenFeint brings to the mobile gaming table. Essentially it’s the Xbox Live or PSN of mobile gaming. I’m definitely looking forward to having a dedicated place on my Droid where I can turn to find some decent gaming.