Hoyle Casino Series for Mac, Windows

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

I found out about this game from a friend. He was playing Texas Hold ‘Em and I was complaining that he folded too easily. I decided to give it a try. Each player can make their own profile. There’s a face maker you can use to make a picture that resembles you or you can use one of several pictures that the computer already has. The face maker also has the ability to randomly generate faces, but these tend to be bizarre. Since I wasn’t planning on using my friend’s computer forever, I just used one of the faces the computer had.

The computer set me up with $5,000 in credit so that I could play any of the games in the casino. (Hoyle Casino 2004 is more than just Texas Hold ‘Em, but I’ll get to that later.) I was able to try the Texas Hold ‘Em and show him how I played it. I ended up losing a little money, but as I said, I wasn’t playing for keeps so it didn’t really matter. It’s not like it was real money anyway.

I tried a few of the other games and decided to get this game for myself. I didn’t really bother with the face maker. It was way too complicated and I didn’t like any of the random faces. I found a face that sort of kind of looked similar to me and used that. For a while, I stuck to roulette and Texas Hold ‘Em because those were the two games that I was most familiar with. I occasionally tried the slots, but didn’t do to well. I went back to Texas Hold ‘Em. Eventually, I decided to try some of the other games. There are a lot of different forms of poker in Hoyle Casino 2004 as well as a lot of different slot machines and other games. There’s keno, craps, black jack, Baccarat, and many other games that I hadn’t heard of before. It even has horse racing.

Most people that I know that have a game like this seem to stick to one or two games. (My friend and I aren’t exceptions.) If you’re get bored easily, but don’t really want to bother learning the rules to a new game, Hoyle Casino 2004 has a tutorial for each game. What you take away from this depends on how easily you learn. The instructions may not always be clear, especially for a game you’ve never even heard of before. Keno and craps were totally alien to me and thus difficult to really understand. I know how to bet and everything, but I still don’t understand how craps really works.

If you get bored of just playing poker game after poker game and want more of a challenge, you can play tournaments. Most of the poker games have tournaments that last several rounds. You and several competitors play 14 hands. The three best move on to play 28 hands. From there, two advance to play as many hands as are necessary for there to be one person left. If you think that the poker tournaments are too long, then you’re in luck. You do have the option to save the tournament whenever a dialogue box comes up. Just leave the game and it’s automatically saved. Most of the other games have tournaments. Roulette is set up with one round and isn’t really as satisfying or challenging as the Texas Hold ‘Em tournament is.

If and when you do decide to leave, you get shown an advertisement for other games. It’s brief, but annoying. I find it to be kind of cheap. I think it’s a lot better to integrate the ads into the game so that they’re not as noticeable.

Ultimately, I find myself usually going back to Roulette or Texas Hold ‘Em. This isn’t to say that the program is bad. I think it could be enjoyable for just about anyone who likes to play, but doesn’t like having to constantly drop money on gambling.

I’d give this four stars.

Freecell

It’s odd that Epinions would have Freecell available for review. It’s not like you really have much of a choice in acquiring this product. Either you get it or you don’t. Freecell usually comes with the more recent versions of Windows. (Older versions have the generic solitaire.) A lot of people either don’t know that Freecell is there or don’t really play the game that much.

For those that have never seen Freecell, some of the solitaire rules apply, but others don’t. For instance, all 52 cards are dealt out in eight columns. The first four columns have seven cards each and the remaining four have six each. Above the eight columns are eight spaces. The four on the left are your free cells, which is where the game gets its name. On the right are the four spaces where all of the cards are supposed to eventually end up. (I’ll go into greater detail later.)

The 52 cards are laid out randomly. The rules for moving them are like the solitaire you may be used to. If you want to move a card, you start with the bottom card. It can be moved to any card that’s one higher and of the opposite color. (Jack is like eleven, the queen is equivalent to twelve and the king is played as thirteen.) The two of hearts can either be moved to the three of clubs or the three of spades. The ten of spades can be put on either the jack of hearts or the jack of diamonds. If a column is empty, you can put any card there. If you need to get at a card, you can use the free cells to hold cards. (Each cell can hold only one at a time.) If you have an alternating series, you can move any part of the series that you have space for. That’s where the free cells come in. To move a series like that, you are theoretically moving one card at a time to the free cells and back down again or to free columns. You’re limited by the number of cells and columns you have available. I’d suggest keeping as many free cells open as possible. (If you’re good, you can find ways around this, but you’re still going to need either free cells or empty columns.)

Like the solitaire you may have played as a kid, the object of the game is to get all of the cards to those four spaces on the top right that I mentioned before. You start with the ace of each suit. There’s one space for each suit; the order doesn’t matter. Once an ace is placed in one of these spaces, you move on to the two of the same suit. (The aces are always automatically moved up once they become available. The rest of the cards are moved up once they serve no other purpose.) You can move the two up as soon as the ace is there, although it’s not always a good idea to move cards up as soon as they become available. Once all of the cards are in these four columns, you win. When the game is over, you can be dealt either a random hand or you can choose one by number.

It sounds easy, but it’s not. They say it’s possible to win every hand dealt to you, but it’s more than likely that you’ll lose, and that’s done when there are no possible moves left. There’s no actual scoring, so you either win or you lose. It will take you a while to get the feel of the game. You’ll find that there are certain strategies that work and some that don’t. I’ve found it’s best that you keep at least two of the free cells open at all times and try to keep at least one column open if possible. Also, don’t move a card just for the sake of moving a card. Make sure you know what you’re doing.

The game is very easy to learn and play on the computer. (I don’t know that I’d have the patience to do this with a real deck of cards. Moving the cards would be too difficult.) A big advantage of playing on the computer is that it keeps stats. After 641 games, I’ve one 55% of them. My longest winning streak was 9 games and the longest losing streak was 7. There’s no way to keep separate stats for different people except to clear the stats. (You’d have to write down your stats before someone else clears them.)

This is a great game only because of its simplicity. If you’re looking for a way to waste just a few minutes, play Freecell. You may find that you’ll be wasting several hours.

Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Let me start by saying that I love this game. Originally, it was fro the PlayStation 2, but it had crossed over to the PC realm by the time my brother brought his computer home for summer vacation. He had to take it back with him because, regrettably, the game is too good for my computer. (My computer can’t handle the system requirements.)

The game starts with a robbery gone wrong. Your first task is to find a place to hide and recover. This ends up being your base of operations while you do missions on the first of three islands. Most of the game consists of doing missions for various Mob people, although you can do other missions, which I’ll get to later. You’re stuck on the first island until you go through enough missions. That’s when the bridge opens and you’re allowed to drive across. The subway will also be closed until then. However, if you’re interested in mass transit, you can use the elevated rail to get around the first island.

There’s lots of sex and violence. To give you an example, you can have sex with a prostitute, and then kill her to get your money back. As you do these highly illegal and immoral things, your wanted level goes up. One star means that the police will only chase you if you cross their path. Two stars mean that they come after you. Three stars mean that a helicopter will come after. (IT goes up to six stars, but I won’t admit to being that wanted.) There are ways of getting rid of the police, such as having your car repainted. Should you get arrested, you’ll be fined some money (actually a pay-off) and released to do more harm to society. Should you do something to get yourself killed, you’ll be sent to the nearest hospital and fined a large quantity of money.

The three islands are very detailed. There are a dozen or so “people” (actually templates) that walk around the city, any of which you can beat up or kill, and several dozen cars models, any of which you can steal. This includes taxis and police vehicles. If you steal a taxi, you can actually pick up cab fares for extra money. If you steal a law-enforcement vehicle, like a police car or tank, you can go on Vigilante Missions. (Yes, I said tank.) These missions aren’t necessary to complete the game. You’ll have plenty of game play without them, although I found them useful on the second island. Many of the missions there were extremely difficult without cheat codes. There are also hidden packages to find and insane stunts to perform for bonuses. There are 100 hidden packages; each set of ten you find will get you a new weapon, which can be found near your hideout.

Speaking of weapons, there are about a dozen, including a baseball bat and a flamethrower. I loved the grenade launcher and the sniper rifle, mostly because both of them allow you to aim first. I found the handgun to be extremely difficult to kill someone with. Either my aim wasn’t good or it didn’t do much damage. You have to be careful with the flamethrower because when you set someone on fire, there’s a risk of the fire jumping back on you. Controls for the guns, and for the game in general, are very easy. The only thing I had difficulty with was the drive-by shootings. I guess if I had stuck to the keyboard, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but I got used to using the mouse. Regrettably, there’s no multiplayer. I’d love to be able to go head-to-head over the Internet or a LAN or something.

I spent a lot of time just driving around in a car listening to the radio stations. Each station consists of a loop, each consisting of a different theme. There’s an 80’s station, a rock station, and so on. You can even use your own mp3 files as another station. I’d have liked to be able to have several mp3 folders so that my brother and I could have each had our own station. It was a nice feature anyway.

This game will provide hours of fun for any adult. I do not, under any circumstances, recommend this game for children. There’s way too much to explain to them and even then, they probably wouldn’t understand or comprehend all of it. If you’re a responsible adult, I’m sure you’ll love this game as much as I do.


IMDb page

The Last Starfighter (1984)

I remember a lot of movies from my childhood.  Some hold up pretty well.  Others don’t.  I think in a lot of cases, I was more easily entertained.  Take The Last Starfighter.  I remember liking it.  It wasn’t one of my favorites, but I was entertained by it.  I recently had the chance to rent it from Netflix to see how it held up.

The movie centers on Alex Rogan.  He’s an average kid in a trailer park.  His one hope to get out of there is college, but he can’t seem to secure the funding.  His one distraction is a game called Starfighter.  He’s pretty good at it.  In fact, he beats the game’s high score of 1,000,000 points.  (To give you an idea of how boring it is in this trailer park, everyone gathers around to witness this with great excitement.)

It isn’t long before Alex is visited by a mysterious man calling himself Centauri.  Centauri is the one who designed and placed the games as a test.  He takes Alex for a ride, promising a surprise when they reach their destination.  It turns out that a war is on and the game is testing for those with The Gift.  Those that pass the test on their respective planets are recruited to become actual starfighters.

Alex immediately wants to go home. The game said nothing about being recruited for an actual war.  So, Centauri begrudgingly takes Alex home.  After Centauri leaves, Alex is attacked.  Fortunately, Alex is able to call Centauri back.  They go back to the military base only to find it attacked.  Alex is now the only starfighter left.  It’s up to him and his navigator, Grig, to defend the galaxy.

The movie deals mostly with Alex being recruited and eventually fighting.  There’s no real commentary on war.  The closest thing is Centauri being reprimanded for recruiting on Earth, which is an unaligned planet.  Even the fact that Alex was essentially tricked into fighting is downplayed.  This is something that may have been dealt with if the movie had been made into a TV show or something.  Each week would have been some aspect of war.  It’s also possible that the movie was aimed at kids.  With the exception of one or two scenes, most of the violence is video-game violence.  Even the fighting with real ships is kind of cheesy by today’s standards.

When I first watched the movie, it seemed like a pretty decent story.  (I suppose for a 9-year-old, it was.)  Watching it now, it seems more like it was meant to set up either another movie or a TV show.  (There are rumors of a sequel to the movie, possibly detailing the adventures of Alex’s child.)  Yes, Alex saves the day.  He returns to Earth to get his girlfriend and let everyone know he’s ok.  In this regard, the story seems incomplete.

Had there been a TV show shortly after the release of the movie, I probably would have viewed the movie differently.  The story would have made more sense in that context.  As it is, I’m wondering if a planned sequel was cancelled or if the movie was released unfinished.  (Both scenarios have happened with other movies.)  If a series came to television based on this movie, I’d definitely give it a chance.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Sometimes, it’s hard to break out of a mold.  If you’re destined for greatness, you don’t question this.  However, if you’re destined to be the bad guy, you may just want a chance to prove you can do better.  Such is the life of Wreck-it Ralph.  He’s a good guy, but he’s been cast as the villain in a game called Fix-it Felix, Jr.  Everyone loves Felix because he comes to the rescue.  No one wants anything to do with Ralph because he’s a big oaf and all he does is destroy stuff.

This is how the game was designed.  Characters have to stay in character while the game is on, but this seems to extend into their off time, as well.  Ralph has his purpose, but he also has his place, and that place happens to be a pile of bricks at the end of the day.

One day, he decides to take matters into his own hands.  One of the residents of the building he always destroys tells Ralph that if he can win a medal, he can have the key to the penthouse.  He then goes into a first-person shooter game called Hero’s Duty and manages to get the medal, but inadvertently puts another game at risk.  Also, since Ralph wasn’t in his own game, Fix-it Felix, Jr. is assumed to be broken and may be unplugged.  He’s given the key he was promised, but is further ostracized.  To make matters worse, he has endangered a third game called Sugar Rush Speedway.  While in the game, he meets a character going through a similar plight.  (Vanellope von Schweetz isn’t even allowed to participate in her game.)

This is one of those movies where you can probably figure out what’s going to happen.  If Ralph doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll at least put things back close to the way they were and maybe earn some respect.  The fun of the movie, at least for adults, will be nostalgia.  We get to see a lot of video-game characters for 30 years ago, like Pac-Man and Q*bert.  Some of the games were designed for the movie, either to make it easier to write the story or to at least avoid copyright issues.  The characters live in their own universe with games connected by the power cords.  (Those whose games were shut off live in power strips.)

You’d think that animated means simple, but this was one of the more interesting animated movies I’ve seen in a while.  The main character is a villain trying to be a hero.  He meets another character that also just wants to be accepted.  Yes, a few of the characters are a little exaggerated, but this is a movie about video games and their characters.  This is to be expected.  You can empathize with Ralph; the people in his game aren’t necessarily nasty to him, but they could do a lot better.  He’s not asking for much.

There were a lot of references to video games, a few of which I missed.  Those that grew up in the 80s will probably recognize many of the characters and games.  There are a lot of throwaway jokes based on games, both classic and current.  Most are simple, like graffiti in bathrooms and stuff.  It’s definitely a fun movie.  I’d recommend renting it.

Official Site

IMDb page

Atari: Game Over (2014)

There are certain things that define generations.  Each generation grew up with certain TV shows, listening to certain music and having witnessed certain events.  I had TV shows like Alf to watch.  “Weird Al” Yankovic started releasing albums when I was growing up.  I also remember the Internet eventually becoming commercially viable.  Another major memory was the rise and eventual fall of Atari.

Atari is still a name in video games today, but has gone through several phases since I was a kid.  Way back in 1977, the year after I was born, they introduced a game console known as the Atari 2600.  This is back when video arcades were big.  Someone got the idea to market a console that could play those same arcade games, but at home.  Instead of giving their kids an endless supply of quarters and sending them off to the mall, parents could now just buy a system and a few cartridges and let the kids play for a few hours at home.

Many of the games were simple.  We started off with pong, which was an electronic version of ping pong.  There was another game called Adventure, where you had to complete a quest.  There were also a few ports, like Pac Man and Centipede.  Those that grew up with modern consoles will think that we had it rough.  Back then, just having video games in the comfort of our own home was amazing.

The Atari 2600 was the must-have toy when I was a kid.  Many of the games sold countless copies.  Atari seemed like it could do no wrong.  That changed with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.  Howard Scott Warshaw was given five weeks to make a video game based on the movie, which he did.  The game was regarded as being so bad and unplayable that it led to the downfall of Atari.  Rumor had it that the game was so bad that the company literally buried it (in a shallow, unmarked grave, no less) before going out of business.

That’s where the documentary comes in.  A crew is assembled and brought to Alamogordo, New Mexico.  The city’s landfill is supposed to be the final resting place of these cartridges.  The exact number and location weren’t recorded.  For all anyone knows, they don’t even really exist.  Several people, including a waste disposal expert/historian, a former mayor and several city officials comment on the game and its fate.  Warshaw is also interviewed for the documentary.  He even gives a tour of the facilities where he worked for Atari.

If you were following the news around this time, you may recall that they did eventually find the games.  You may also know that there’s not a huge story here.  The documentary is 66 minutes and does seem to run a little long.  The stuff about the history was great, but it could have been pared down a little.  The problem is that there tends to be a best-or-worst mentality with some things and E.T. seems to be regarded as the worst video game, so bad that it single-handedly brought down an entire company.

I don’t remember the game being spectacular.  I recall my cousin being able to beat it in just a minute or two, so I didn’t really see any replay value.  Admittedly, the game was made to cash in on the success of a movie and wasn’t  really given the time that other games had.  A bad product is survivable, especially if you’ve had a lot of good products before it.

Most of the people watching this documentary will be people around my age that are looking for nostalgia.  It’s the kind of story that you’d read in the newspaper (another anachronism) and think that it’s interesting before moving on to the horoscopes.  This documentary is mostly unnecessary suspense.  While there was no point that I wanted to turn it off, it could have easily been cut to thirty minutes.

To focus on one game is a disservice to the company as a whole.  This was what paved the way for Nintendo and Xbox.  The truth is that things change.  I feel bad for Warshaw, who never worked as a game designer again.  This is despite E.T. being his only real failure, and the failure wasn’t even his.  I would place blame more on management.  A lot of good things came out of that time, including the Atari.  I’d rather remember all the fun I had.

Atari Web site

IMDb page