XBOX LIVE ARCADE WEDNESDAYS - POKER SMASH
This week, Xbox Live Arcade brings us another original title in the form of Void Star Creations' Poker Smash. What we've got here is your standard "match the objects" puzzle game mixed with everyone's favorite card game poker.
I was originally hoping the game would play more like the old Poker Solitaire game found on the Atari 2600 cartridge Casino, but while that little dream may have been crushed, Poker Smash does present an interesting twist to the standard puzzler and offers some fun gameplay all of it's own. Gameplay is simple enough, poker cards appear in columns that are moving towards the top of the screen. Your job is to move cards around sideways from column to column in an attempt to form poker hands. As you create hands, the cards are removed from the column and the game continues until one of the columns reaches the top of the screen. Players are also given the ability to destroy specific cards they target as well as change the speed of the columns movement. Put it all together and you've got a pretty decent puzzler.
Title: Poker Smash
Developer: Void Star Creations LLC
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Genre: Xbox Live Arcade
Release Date: 2/06/08
Console: Xbox 360
Players: 1-2 / 2-5 Online
Full Game: 800 points ($10)
Rating: E (Everyone) Mild Language
Demo?: Yes
From the Xbox.com product description;
"Poker Smash™ is an action-packed puzzle game with a poker twist. Poker Smash expands on the traditional match-three puzzle mechanic with elements of one of the world's most popular card games: poker. Make vertical and horizontal matches by forming poker hands, and play in seven different game modes, including multiplayer. Fast and fluid controls paired with radical features such as super-slow motion and card-blasting bombs make this game a whole new puzzle experience!
- Innovative gameplay: Match-three gameplay with a twist. Create poker hands and form chains to rack up the big score.
- Seven game modes: Intense game modes include action, timed, puzzle levels (55 of them), practice, custom playlist, split screen head-to-head, and multiplayer tournaments.
- Multiplayer experience: Two-player offline and multiplayer over Xbox LIVE® is featured.
- New leaderboards: In addition to the traditional leaderboards, Poker Smash features never-before-seen rivalry tracking and even movie recording with shared playback.
- Immersive environment: The next-gen 3-D graphics feature eleven different highly detailed environments and background themes, coupled with thirteen new original soundtracks for play." - Xbox.com
As for last week's Live Arcade releases, I'm going to keep this short as I've been experiencing technical difficulties all day long here and just want to get this up on the site…
As I mentioned in last week's post, I'm not the person to judge Chessmaster Live, so I have nothing to say about how well it plays a game of chess. You're still on your own on that one. Rez HD on the other hand, maintains all the trippiness of it's predecessors while still being a quality rail shooter. Try the demo and I'm sure you'll agree.
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