Hoyle Card Games 2008

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $15.99

Features:

• PC Games Software; for Windows
• Windows XP Compatible
• Game Genre: Strategy/RPG
• Minimum Hard Drive Space Required: 1.0 GB; Minimum Processor Speed Required: 266MHz; Minimum RAM Required: 16 MB
• Published by Encore

Customer Reviews:

Lots of Fun! [Posted on 2008-04-02]
My mother had this game and brought it once while visiting. When she left I had to buy it! My kids ages 10, 7 and 5 all love it. I could spend hours playing it too!

Do not buy for a Mac [Posted on 2008-04-11]
The card games all restart with the same hand dealt every time you restart the game. It is a known bug, but they have only patched the windows version.
So unless you enjoy playing the same hand every time you play, stay away.

Hoyle Card Game [Posted on 2008-04-20]
This works without a glitch on my iMac. Easy to install,easy to play. I'm so glad to finally have all these card games available.

Still good old Hoyle Card Games, but somethings need to be fixed! [Posted on 2008-04-25]
I've always enjoyed the computer versions of Hoyle Card Games since practically 10 years ago. Up to around the 2005 edition, Sierra held the license to the Hoyle name. They released fine and generally bug-free versions. But unfortunately, later on, Encore Software got hold of the license. They must have been given the source code of the program from Sierra, since their versions are so similar to the original Sierra ones. But somehow, they managed to introduce a lot of bugs, especially concerning the sound. As everyone is pointing out, the 2007 edition was terrible on that aspect. This 2008 edition had some of the bugs corrected, but you can still find some missing sound bits. For example, when playing Hearts, when the queen of spades is played, one of the characters will always say some teasing comment. Well, I could see the lips move, but again, no sound was playing. Half of the fun of Hoyle Card Games is the various comments the computer opponents tell you or tell each other. If this feature is broken, the games become kind of dull.

Sierra was replacing some of the characters every few years just to bring some fresh new blood and new comments to the opponents lineup. (You can see the previous cast from circa 2000 in the pdf manual included on the 2008 disc on page 8. Although you can't play with them, since Encore is using the newer cast from recent years). But why wouldn't they do like Sierra and replace some of the cast every few years? Probably just laziness on their part. It's easier to just rehash last year's edition over and over.

Another thing that bugs me... Way back in 2000 or probably earlier, if you played this game in full screen, it would be in 640x480 resolution, if I recall correctly, which was fine back then with the early 8MB graphics cards we were using. Sometime later, they got improved to 800x600, which was great, but they never changed since then. If you play the 2008 edition in full screen, you're still stuck with 800x600! In today's age of 512MB (or more) graphics card, this is preposterous! Even the lowest quality graphics card available in stores today could display this game in 1600x1200 without breaking a sweat. Granted, it's just a card game, but still, why live in the stone age? Maybe hiring a decent programmer would be a sound investment for Encore Software.

If you can only find the 2008 edition, buy it! The price is ok, and it's still Hoyle Card Games, after all. But if you can, try to hunt down one of the earlier Sierra releases (2005 or earlier, I think), to see how good these games used to be.

Hours of Fun [Posted on 2008-04-27]
I not only bought Hoyle Card Games for myself but, also as a gift. There are so many different card games to play that there is never a dull moment. I had fun just creating the faces. I recommend this item to everyone.

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