The idea of the game is that you’re given a random set of cards in each line; the 10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace. You won’t see or find any of the lower numbers in this game, so don’t go looking. The board moves in an upward motion and you need to move the cards horizontally to create Poker Winning hands before the screen reaches the top. If it reaches the top, you’re done and the game is over.

You can play through the tutorial but I don’t think it’s necessary. You have a choice between Action and Timed modes for this App. Action will slowly increase the pace that the cards stream up the screen. I didn’t find this increased pace quick enough as you’ll see later on in the review. The Timed mode gives you 3 minutes to score as many points as you can while everything else remains the same.

As you go on your merry way you’ll have bombs that you can place on the board if you get stuck or if a couple of columns are getting out of control. You can speed up or slow down the pace of movement upwards but I found that the speed of this game, as compared to the XBLA version, lacked a lot when it came to the speed of the game. The Xbox version seemed to be quickly paced while the App game felt like it dragged on forever. I found myself swiping up on the screen to get a ton of cards to show up and therefore make it more challenging for myself.

The controls are pretty darn easy since all you’re pretty much doing is moving the cards left or right with a swipe of your finger. The menus were easy to make your way through and options easy to set. The graphics are pretty decent and I had no complaints on them but they didn’t compare to the Xbox version at all. The game runs smoothly and without any hitches. It never crashed on me or froze. The sound effects are right on cue but the music I didn’t like much so I turned it on low/off and listened to my own.

If you have an OpenFeint account you can compare your score to those of your friends or the online community. If you have friends who own the game and are on OpenFeint than the replay value of the game just multiplied itself. Who doesn’t like having the highest score? If you aren’t playing against friends and aren’t feeling too challenged by this game then you’re not going to find a lot of replay value here.

I bought this several years ago on the Xbox360, played it a lot, and then forgot that I had it until I bought the same game for my iPad and wanted to compare playing styles. I gotta admit, I like playing it on the X360 A LOT more than I do on the iPad, it just loses something in translation.

The game is rated “E” for Everyone but it’s true when it comes to the easy of moving the cards around but there is a little bit of knowledge you need to know about making valid poker hands that many younger kids won’t know. So there isn’t any violence, sex, smoking or alcohol but the standard knowledge of what a poker hand is and the hierarchy of them will go over many of the younger audience’s head.