Hoyle Official Card Games Reviews

Specifically, in the game of Hearts, there are many options, which adds to more strategy and less luck. My favorite options are 1. If a player takes 26, he scores 0 and the others get 26 each ; 2. No counting cards can be played on the 1st trick; the 2 of clubs leads in the hand; 4. The jack of diamonds subtracts 10 for the player who can take it in a trick. These options make Hearts a really good game of skill!

This has to be the worst Card Game collection I have ever played. They absolutely ruined this game. Its not anything like the original game setup. I guess I wasted my money because I just can't stand to play it anymore.

This is not a sophisticated p.o.s. (piece of software). It's of the quality that even EA would probably be too embarassed to put in their 'on the house' section, but again, it's a collection of card games, so....Don't get your tightie whities in a bunch about that: it's card games, and it goes relatively deep. It has dozens of different solitares, kiddie classics like go fish and crazy 8s, amongst more complex ones such as bridge, hearts, pinnocle, gin rummy, and quite a few others i haven't heard of or delved in to. There's a lot of unwarranted negging about it, but those complaining solely about the price, you're 100% correct. The only problem with this collection is it's WAY overpriced. I bought it on sale for 6 bucks, and even that much made me raise an eyebrow after i opened it for the first time. It really should be a 5 dollar game that goes half off once in a while. If you like to have a no brainer timesuck card game sim in your library, this is the one, though i caution you to mind what you pay for it. Certainly not worth 20 bucks.

I should have read the reviews before buying this game. Just as some other reviewers have stated, this game is not like previous additions and is not worth the money. Just walk away.

They use the name Hoyle but are in no way similar to the Hoyle card games of the last decade. They're version is as unrefined as the first product that came out way back in 2003 and is a complete rip off at 22 dollars. Steam should hold there suppliers accountable as the product demo states that it took all the best of the Hoyle games from the last 10 years and made this product. A complete and out right lie!

I own many versions of the Hoyle Card, Board, and Puzzle games from over the years. I just bought this pack this morning and took a quick look at it. The spiderette solitaire seems to work the same as previous versions. Looking at some of the others it seems they took the logic and RNG from the last version (pre-steam, by Encore I think) and used that engine for this game. So what's different. The windows are given the windows 8 treatment for colour and style. They took a sampling of previous games and included them. The face creator creates creepy faces. There is a selection midi music. The backgrounds, card faces, and card backs are okay but bland and don't seem to have any common theme going to match them together by color or style. In terms of recreational card play, I think this game is the same as previous version. The look and style is bland but varied. The entertaining characters are gone. So with sound off and my own music going this makes a reasonable coffee break game. 3 of 5 stars.

I have a few of the older games by Hoyle but was still pleased to see this one available on Steam, and for sale. I have played two games, and here is what I think.. Yes we don't have the fun characters we knew and loved from the older games, but this set of card games is quite decent. The cards are a good size, and the customizations available are impressive. There are many different card patterns and backgrounds, plus many types of music, Yes one can even still customize ones' own avatar , but cannot pick the characters to play against. They seem random, and are very chatty but one cannot chat back . The difficulty level can be adjusted which is great. I taught myself quite a few card games with Hoyle software and look forward to learning some new ones here! If you like card games and enjoy playing them on Steam, this is a no brainer.

TL;DR: Give it a skip. UPDATED: Since the Sept 2016 update, I can only say the game is even worse. The Face Creator makes death-mask-truly-gruesome-players. We're not talking fun zombie type characters or even ghouls here. We're talking bony, ugly, emaciated, scrawny, staring-at-you-with dead eyes type faces. Creepy but not-fun-creepy. The NPCs are even worse. You have Satch who is--you guessed it--Sasquatch, a pirate, a character with a pretty un-nifty cowboy hat. It sounds like exactly TWO people voiced the male and female characters--and not with a great deal of talent. While it no longer sounds like you're playing with a malfunctioning Stephen Hawking voice device for every character, the voice work is just GD painful--although not as painful as the awful script. The kicker: you can't turn it OFF! You can't shut them up! You can turn the volume off. You can make them talk a little less. But there they are--lips flappin' at you, slowing down the gameplay. You can't even pick which NPCs you'd like to play with or against. In the Sierra version, I always picked Elayne as my Canasta or Euchre partner. That tough-as-nails NYC girl was a wicked player in some games. I still can't, in good conscience, recommend this game--unless I wanted to torture you ... with banality ... and make you hate me ... like, for years ... while you burned me in effigy over a black candle ... naked ... at midnight ... under a full moon ... after sacrificing a goat. ---- Compared to the version done by Sierra many years ago, this game is flat. Sierra's version had a wonderfully rich set of characters who were fun and engaging to play with. The characters in this version sound like badly synthesized text to speech. They have no personality. The elevator music ranges from odd to grating. It reminds me of the really bad MIDI files one could download years ago and sound just as bad. And who knew there were so many solitaire games! In that, I have to admit one gets their money's worth! *tongue squarely embedded in cheek* I get that they had to write this so it could be playable on a number of devices, hence its flat look. It just pales compared to past versions. Would that my old Sierra CD still work! Good effort. Just not a terribly interesting game.

My wife and I love to play cribbage. I wanted to get a computer cribbage game for those times when I need my crib fix and my wife isn't up for a game. This serves that purpose. It's decent, but not fabulous. Pros: -- Game runs in full screen. -- Seems to be totally bug-free (at least cribbage and gin rummy...I haven't had a chance to play the other games yet). -- The AI is alright. -- Some of the other reviewers seemed upset because, apparently, the AI avatars and voices in this version are inferior to previous installments (or something). I dunno...I had an older version of Hoyle's card games on my old computer several years ago, and I personally don't remember the AI's "personality" being anything even remotely memorable. I honestly don't give a rat's behind about any of that. I just want to play crib, and this game lets me do it. I guess it's important to some other players, but it wasn't an issue for me. Cons: -- The soundtrack is atrocious elevator music. Fortunately, it can be turned off. -- The game uses rookie scoring methods for cribbage. Anyone who plays crib knows that a pattern of cards like the following, JQQK or 4456 for instance, is known as a "double-run" and is worth 8 points. But the AI scores it like a noob, counting it as two runs (3 points each) and a pair (2 points). Here's another example: in crib, a three-of-a-kind is known as a "pair royal" and is worth 6 points, but the AI counts it as 3 seperate pairs, worth 2 apiece. Why does this matter, you ask? Well, first of all, it's totally annoying to veteran players who are used to the standard scoring practices. And, secondly, because one of the best parts of cribbage is watching your opponent overlook something as they count up their hand, and then stealing those points for yourself! It's known as the "muggins rule". The game does give you the option of playing with the muggins rule enabled...but, jeez, I can't imagine any better way to suck the fun out of it and make it a tedious ordeal, than by using the rookie scoring methods the AI employs. I mean, I guess for someone learning cribbage for the first time the scoring MIGHT be helpful...but they could have at least given the player an option in the options menu to choose between "veteran scoring" and "beginner scoring". Meh... :P Conclusion: 6/10. When push comes to shove, it gets a thumbs up...barely. It sucks compared to a real opponent, of course. But the lame crib scoring methods and the sound issues are what really drag it down. I got it on sale for 75% off, so I'm happy with the purchase overall. I would have been disappointed had I paid full price. Wait for it to go on sale.

I love playing card games on the computer to pass the time, but I was disappointed by this edition of Hoyle. The faces look really strange to me. Gone are the old players and side banter that made playing previous versions of Hoyle fun - I miss Roswell, Rhett, Marvin, and others. There do not seem to be a lot of new games over the previous version, either. I used to enjoy playing French Tarot in the 2005 edition of Hoyle, which they removed several versions ago and never added back. I like that Hoyle is on Steam now, but they really need to go back and try again with this one.