Late last month Gameloft announced a new title in their N.O.V.A. series of first-person shooters subtitled Elite. Besides a single promotional image, nothing more was known about the game. Then last week Gameloft released a trailer for N.O.V.A Elite that strongly hinted at the game being a purely multiplayer experience. Well, it turns out that wasn't too far off as N.O.V.A. Elite is now available as an online multiplayer game on Facebook.

N.O.V.A. Elite actually plays pretty well for a browser-based game, and comes with loads of different items for customizing the look and weaponry of your created character. But much like most free-to-play Facebook games a large portion of this will require using an in-game virtual currency called Facebook Credits which can be purchased with real money.

I'm more than a little disappointed that N.O.V.A. Elite isn't a new iOS title, as the previous games in the series have been pretty excellent. I guess it's entirely possible that N.O.V.A. Elite could still show up on the App Store at some point, but there's been no confirmation from Gameloft about this.