Customer Reviews

Hoyle Board Games

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This game was awesome! When you sit down to play you think you are only going to play a little bit but it turns out to be much more than that! Here is a list of games.
*Backgammon
*Battling Ships
*Checkers
*Chess
*Chinese Checkers
*Dominos
*Line em up (Connect Four)
*Mahjong Tiles
*Mancala
*Master Match
*Pachisi
*Placer Racer
*Reversi
*Rummy Squares
*Snakes and Ladders
*Yacht (Yachtzy)

Hoyle Board Games is wonderful family fun. Placer Racer is totally addictive, the chess game is pretty good, and the other 14 games are fun too. My 10 year old loves the program, and I do too. There's Majhong Tiles too, which I had never played before, but the program makes it so easy to learn new games. There is a strategy guide that comes with the game. It's a small book with all the rules and tips for playing each game.

You don't need much in graphics for a 2D game, so I was surprised that I needed to keep the CD in for animations and computer player voices. The players comments get annoying after a while, so tossing the CD asside isn't much of a sacrifice. I can only assume its to discourage passing the game around and not getting the full fun of the game if you do. Playing with the CD in gets an annoying animation sequence when you start the game that Freezes everything until you can hit excape and get past it. Another annoying thing is that the game play freezes when the game spins up the CD for a computer player to say something. Also, when you quit the game, you get a window that advertises Hoyles dozen or more other game packages. I can see this being in a game Demo, but in the final purchased product?
What would also be nice is the ability to disable these advertisements and game start animation. I guess their intent is to sell other game packages, but it's only removed any desire for me to purchase another Hoyle product.

The game play is alright, graphics don't have to be fancy for board games. My problem with the whole Hoyle game line is the Annoyance screens for their other game packages when you quit.
I can see this being in a Demo, but was really mad when it was there in game that I purchased. Another Anoyance is the CD dongle. Character speech files are kept on the CD, you have to have the CD in to hear it. There is also an annoying delay that freezes game play When the cd spins up when a character speaks

the games play just like the board versions but it could have been designed better and without the annoyance advertisements

This is a great collection of old fashioned games. I can't get into those complicated software games that require hundreds of hours just to learn but this is easy and challenging. The only problem is that it took hours to figure out how to load it into an OS X system on Mac. I had to call Apple as it didn't do it automatically. Once in, it was great but - ouch!- what a headache!

If you remember Battle Ships you will love Battling Ships on this game cd. And the grafics for Mahjong is awsome. I even got my husband to play Chinese Checkers! These are the games we played as children. Now we can play as an adult. Try it you will love it!!

the new Hoyle Board Games have inproved over the last two years with inproved grafices and have made it hard to stop playing the meny of the games. We have to have a computer for each person in my home so that everyone is able to have time to play the game they enjoy.

If you have purchased the other games in the Hoyle series, even previous versions, you know these games are high quality. If you've never purchased these games, you need to do so. Great games, played against fun characters, with different levels of difficulty and a book both taylored to help you learn the games. I wish they'd expanded the number of characters in the latest releases, but they kept my old favorites (Harley and Robin) so I can't complain too much. Facemaker features in the new releases allow you to create your own character - if you have a previous version without Facemaker, I'd suggest upgrading.

This CD more than lives up to its promise. There are so many games you could spend years getting to them. The checkers game is impressive because it is 3 dimensional, not like the mechanistic shareware programs you thought were good. The characters you play against add a lot to the games too.

THIS CD IS SO MUCH FUN. IT IS THE ONLY GAME I HAVE FOUND WHERE PACHISI IS FEATURED. I HAVE FUN PLAYING ONLINE OR OFFLINE WITH THIS GAME AND I ESPECIALLY LOVE THE FACEMAKER FEATURE!