Lightning Review: Texas Hold 'Em by Apple, Inc

Next up: a review from iPhoneMilk: Texas Hold 'Em. It's a very well made game and (surprise!) it's developed by none other than Apple, Inc. You can but it on iTunes for just $4.99.

Hello everyone this will be my first review of an iPhone app, More reviews are to come to stay tuned =)

First off, What's the App?- Texas Hold'em!

This is a must buy for you poker fans! I myself often love to go out and play poker in real person and I always try out the occasional poker game for any device/pc just to see what it's like, but this game has me coming back for more!

Let's Start off with the features (which you can see here on the Home Screen)

Of course, you've got your single player mode, which when you play it it almost feels like you are progressing through a singe player game. You start off with $0 and have to work your way up through each "board" or "Map". Basically they are just different locations and they all go up in cost of "buy in" in order to play. Starting off you can only buy in to the Garage. I thought that was funny and cool myself =). Each board goes up in buy in as i said and Naturally the prize money goes up, allowing you to play higher up in more boards. (of course this is assuming that you are doing well.

The cool thing about single player is it saves your money so you can continue and come back to play.

The Single player does have one Con, and one con only. There is a bug when you have money, it's happened to me twice already, basically if you try to buy in to a higher board sometimes it will flash then take you back to the Board screen. The problem is it takes your money from you and you don't get to go in and play. If this happens to you my advice is to close the game and re open it. Don't worry it saves your money!

Here's a Screen of what it looks like when you're broke and also when the bug occurs.

Next up we've got Multiplayer and Tilt Features! and Character Choice!

The Tilt features are very impressive! (this works on both single and Multiplayer! Basically depending on how you are holding your iPhone you will get a different view of playing Poker, and this helps out for Quickplaying or if you just want a "Cooler" view. Personally i like the over the head view myself for Quicker play and also to just see everything better, but the cool paer is depending on what view you choose will depend on how the game feels while playing!

This is what the over the head view looks like

The first person view is very cool in which while you are in it the character's Actually move, like a little video animation. so you can see the dealer actually dealing the cards =)

A Screen is below of the First person view.

The other cool thing about this game is the Character choices. There's a TON that you can choose from. This is basically how you want to look. I have tested this in both single player and multiplayer and when you are in Multiplayer the other players actually do see you as the character that you choose which is cool!

One great thing I would like to note about playing this game is your on an iPhone so the Devs of the game made it feel "cool" when playing poker. What i mean by this is Chips and Cards (If you fold, you drag your finger on the cards and throw them on the table, or if you want to go all in? Just touch your chips and throw them All in. It's great!

About the Multiplayer. You will quickly notice that when you try to connect nothing will happen. This is because they designed it so you only play with anybody else within your "Local network" or Wifi network that also has the game. They did not design in an Over the internet system, or Servers that you can connect to to play other players... maybe in an update? =( This is why i will be docking the game 1 point.

Summary / Pros / Cons

Pros

  1. Lot's of replay
  2. Great Graphics and effects
  3. Realistic feeling of throwing in chips and cards with touching
  4. Tilt views
  5. Cool sounds, good music in the background - Chill poker music
  6. Character choices
  7. Saves your money!

Cons

  1. The multiplayer needs an Internet option to play more players (docking one point because of this
  2. The money bug when trying to go to higher boards
  3. That's it!

Scoring in at 4 out of 5!! A Must Buy!

Dieter Bohn