Well, I’m back from “sunny” Queensland. I know you didn’t know I was going, because I didn’t get a chance to mention it. The problem with being “indispensable” at work is that going on holidays means longer hours and no time for much more beyond eating and occasionally sleeping.
While away, I downloaded UNO for the Android (currently at US$2.99), since the person I was staying with expressed an interest in perhaps playing. That didn’t happen of course, but I did get to play with the Single Player mode a bit.
The first thing to know about downloading UNO is that once you’ve downloaded it, there’s still 45Mb of data to download once you start the program. They suggest you might want to be on Wi-Fi to do this, but since I didn’t have that available, I just let it download over 3G. Or HSPDA. Or 2G. The signal was really crappy.
Gameloft have done a wonderful job with UNO with the graphics being attractive and slick, with each ‘event’ (Reverse, UNO, Wild Card) being nicely animated. All of the UNO rules are in there, including challenges and variants such as Penalties (if you get, say, a +2 card, you can put down your own +2 card on it, and pass on the +4 to the next player).
Single players have the option of a quick game (first to 250 points), or a Tournament. Tournament pits you against a computer controlled player initially, and eventually three other players as your score increases. This makes for an interesting challenge, though I really want to try this in two player (or more) mode, since half the fun of UNO is screwing your friends over.
There’s only two things I’d like to see fixed with this version of UNO. The first is that even with sound effects and music both off, you still have to hear the Gameloft “theme” when the game starts.
The second is that while your cards are animating into a ‘close up’ view, then trying to play a card is difficult, if not impossible. I know you’re supposed to wait until the cards are in place, but this small issue makes the control feel a little clunky. Still, if you’re not impatient like I am, it shouldn’t be a problem.
I really like this version of UNO, it’s attractive and has all the options I could want. Since I always have my phone with me, then a game with friends is always available.
