Got this at the w/e and I've been munching through the single player "stamp" mode to unlock everything, and it's not a bad little budget title. Many of the games are card games ( some of which I've never heard of ), and there are definitely 42 different games, not just variations, I counted them 
The presentation is a bit basic, and the AI is pretty deficient on the inteligence part ( not tried Chess yet to see how good the engine is ), but for a quick lunch time blast, most of the games are ok. There's not really anything that stands out as great though. The dart game seems too random with the throwing using the touch screen; playing 301 for the first time took over 15 mins because neither the CPU or I could get a double to start for ages. The bowling is a bit better, but again very basic.
The Texas hold-em plays a pretty weak game - it's a limit game, so no going all in, and it can take a while to play out if you fold. Certainly not a match for the XBLA game.
The Stamp mode forces you to play through the different games ( and unlocks the locked ones - there are five locked I think it was ). The balance game is quite fun.
Played a couple online, the biggest problem I had was finding people online to play against. Found someone on Checkers ( and got beaten by a king - bah ), and it all worked nice and quickly. Even though I lost, I was still ranked in the top 300, around the 270 mark, which just shows how few peeps are online with this. I couldn't get enough people on Texas Hold-em. It's all nice and seemless though, no lag spoiling things ( well, the games aren't really reliant on minute pings anyway ).
Worth the ?17 I paid for it I reckon - just a pity there doesn't seem to be more people playing via Wifi.
The presentation is a bit basic, and the AI is pretty deficient on the inteligence part ( not tried Chess yet to see how good the engine is ), but for a quick lunch time blast, most of the games are ok. There's not really anything that stands out as great though. The dart game seems too random with the throwing using the touch screen; playing 301 for the first time took over 15 mins because neither the CPU or I could get a double to start for ages. The bowling is a bit better, but again very basic.
The Texas hold-em plays a pretty weak game - it's a limit game, so no going all in, and it can take a while to play out if you fold. Certainly not a match for the XBLA game.
The Stamp mode forces you to play through the different games ( and unlocks the locked ones - there are five locked I think it was ). The balance game is quite fun.
Played a couple online, the biggest problem I had was finding people online to play against. Found someone on Checkers ( and got beaten by a king - bah ), and it all worked nice and quickly. Even though I lost, I was still ranked in the top 300, around the 270 mark, which just shows how few peeps are online with this. I couldn't get enough people on Texas Hold-em. It's all nice and seemless though, no lag spoiling things ( well, the games aren't really reliant on minute pings anyway ).
Worth the ?17 I paid for it I reckon - just a pity there doesn't seem to be more people playing via Wifi.
Comment