Customer Reviews

Bicycle Card Games

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The bells and whistles, and the silly avatars don't enhance the games on this new Bicycle card games. The solitaire selections are less interesting than the first Bicycle solitaire, and my favorites, Spider and Forty Thieves are missing. One of the games doesn't work at all, and some are quite awkward.

Many of the card games work fine but there are problems
with pinochle:
The deal doesn't rotate between players. The deal
stays with the same player throughout the game.
The same player will get "stuck" with the deal
the entire game.
Even at expert level the computer partner and
opponents play like novices.

unless you are a glutton for punishment. You will be consistently dealt many bad hands. You will see many 4 - 6 point hands before you see one over 12. A quick survey of ten hands showed 7 hands with under 15 points between my partner and myself. As a result, you will be thrashed by your computer opponent. They give you three levels, easy, intermediate, and hard. You get the same bad hands with all. I don't see the difference.

In addition, your partner provide many insane bids. Very frustrating.

And its all too bad because the graphics are great, the presentation is logical, and even the music is good.

Its like they do a good job with everything but the card playing part.

It makes you wish they would come out with a new, upgraded version.

jwrit

I enjoyed playing Spider on a friend's computer -- the game came with the XP version of windows. I looked for a copy of the game so I could play it. If that's what you're looking for, I'd suggest buying Hoyle's Card Games. It has Spider, as well as at least 25 other varations of solitaire. I enjoy this product much more! :)

I like the way you can choose your own avatar. The music in the back ground is nice.

I just thought I'd be getting more than one solitaire game and there's no poker either.

This is a great product that offers a wide array of games. I have never seen spite and malice in a computer game before. I just wish the game kept running statics and that individual games had more adjustable options to tailor the games to suit your pleasure. Over all smashing.

The bridge game doesn't adhere to basic bridge rules. The experts play as novices. A partner makes errors in plays, losing the contract. I like that you can delete the player's faces on this one game.

Cribbage rotation of deal gets stuck. I dealt 7 times in succession. Frustrating. It does count fast. You can backup and change the crib cards if the 'up' card is not to your advantage. That was is fun way to cheat

I'm sorry I had to give this game even one star. This game pack is so full of programming bugs it's ridiculous. Don't waste your money.

A nice game overall, with cool graphics and music. However, thorough product testing doesn't seem to have been high on Microsoft's list of things to do.

These are the bugs I've found after playing this game intensively for a week:

Go Fish: If you're the only player left with cards the game doesn't know what to do. You can click all you want on the pile, on your cards, on the other players... but you're going nowhere. Quitting the game (and losing the score) is the only way out.

Canasta: This is the card game I bought this package for. The computer plays a really nice game, but has the following bugs: First, after all players have exchanged their red 3's, the game still insists on checking for red threes in the player's hands after every draw from the pile. Second, even though one of the rules of Canasta is that you cannot go out before you get at least one canasta, the computer players regularly go out this way. This seems to happen when the last card on the player's hand is a Joker that would complete a Canasta. Instead of doing so, the computer discards the joker, leaving you with an illegal hand. Although the computer players are allowed to this, one is not.

I've also seen (though it's usually too fast to be sure) some players, even myself, getting skipped. I'm still trying to prove this one is going on.

One final annoying bug has to do with the computer character's speech. It seems hard-coded to respond to certain events (i.e.: groan if you make a nice play). But they will also do this even if they're playing as your partner.

Overall, the game is good and offers nice game play. I haven't tried the online options yet. But the bugs eventually interfere with the otherwise decent gameplay.

Finally, contrary to another review I saw here about this product, the game does offer several variations of 1-deck and 2-deck solitaire games.

I'm glad I read your reviews!
I read that this game DOES NOT include the Spider Game!