Hoyle Casino 2004

Rating:
Summary: all hoyle games
Review: I own every hoyle game Sierra ever came out with and everyone that you play, you must insert the cd for it to work properly.
if you don't insert the cd, the voices & music does not work.
I see know problem putting in the cd. I love these games and thier characters keep them coming!

Rating:
Summary: Must have CD in drive to play game!
Review: I purchased this and Hoyle Casino 2004 for my sons for Christmas and was very disappointed to see the CD must be in the drive to play this game, even after full installation. Corporate greed is alive and well at Sierra!!!

Rating:
Summary: Puzzle Game
Review: I read the reviews and was thrown for a loop because 99% of the complaints were talking about card games. I was looking for review of the puzzle games and I found only a few. Puzzle is outstanding, addictive, fun, relaxing and frustrating. What more can you want?

Rating:
Summary: Poker Programming
Review: I really like the Hoyle card games, especially Spades, Hearts, and Gin Rummy. However, the Poker game is not at all realistic. Whoever wrote the paramaters evidentally knows absolutely nothing about poker probalities.
I do not play it often, but played two games tonight. In one game there were SIX times that a player got four of a kind! Twice it was four aces! The probabalities of that is somewhere two million to one.
I would surely like to see you issue an upgrade to this game to make it more realistic.
Sincerely,

Thomas Wall
[e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Stay away from Hoyle Casino 2004!!!
Review: I really wish I had read the reviews here about Hoyle Casino 2004.

I bought the game this week, and did a full install on my laptop. I use my laptop for travel, so I expected to be able to play this game on the long flights.

Lo and behold I was shocked when I found out that I could not play the game without the CD inserted in the CD-Rom.

As a frequent traveller I find this unacceptable. I tend to lose CD's when I travel, or damage them due to the hectic packing and unpacking of my personal things. I tried to make a backup copy of the CD, and found out that I have to buy a program that will defeat the copyright protection like Alcohol 120% or CloneCD.

Even if I do spend the extra money and time to make a portable copy of the original so I don't lose it or break it, I will still kill the battery if I'm on a flight that lasts more than a couple of hours. The other solution is to make an image of the CD on my hard drive, and point the game to that. This would take up more precious space on my hard drive, when the game already took up 455 MB of space on my drive with the install already.

All in all I am very fed up with Hoyle and their disdain for paying customers. I don't want to be treated like a criminal, and I will boycott all future Hoyle products.

Stay away from this product!!!

Rating:
Summary: Copy Restrictions & Bugs (Hoyle Table Games 2004)
Review: I've owned several Hoyle games in the past and simply cannot recommend this one. The games themselves look interesting, but the intrusive copy restriction strongly weakens the value of this product. The fragile CD must be in the drive whenever the game is played (the copy restrictions also defeat virtual CD type programs).

While this may seem like a minor issue, it isn't for me. I was burned once by Sierra when they decided to drop replacement disks for another copy restricted game years ago. I refused to buy another product from them for several years, up until Hoyle Casino last year. Needless to say, I'm not exactly thrilled to see these types of copy restrictions again. Now that I've had a sample of the new copy restrictions, this alone will prevent me from buying any more Sierra games.

But that is not all that is wrong with Hoyle Table Games 2004. I was not able to get Maximum Pool to even run (WinXP). Sierra's solution (on their web site) is to disconnect any gamepad or joystick connected to the computer. Sadly, my computer throws a fit when the gamepad isn't attached (I often have to reinstall when I want to use it again).

Finally, like many Hoyle games, the AI seems heavily weighted in favor of the computer players. I've virtually given up on Hoyle Casino because of this (I almost always lose), and Hoyle Table Games may join Casino in the closet if I don't see better results. I like a challenge, but not to be defeated virtually every single time.

Anyway, that's my take on Hoyle Table Games 2004. Hopefully some of this will prove useful for you.

Rating:
Summary: have to learn all over again
Review: It takes some time to get used to the fact that you have to play it with the CD in.

Rating:
Summary: Our purchase was a mistake
Review: Like the others, we should have read the online reviews first, instead of making this purchase on the fly.
PROS:
* Highly customizable animated characters is quite fun.
* Game environment feels very casino like, with the sounds and other player commentary.
CONS:
* Requiring the CD in the tray to play this game is annoying.
* MUCH worse than that, you can't do anything else on your computer when this game is running. They recommend that you close ALL other programs to run it. We host a WebCam from our computer 24/7, and have to stop the camera to play this game. We were horrified to learn this and are not sure that the software is returnable. We'd return for that reason alone.
* The game will open full screen, and Windows XP useres will think that they don't even have access to their Taskbar at the bottom of the screen. If you find that to be the case, you can alter one of the program's settings, so it will load at a set reduced size (that's almost too small). There is no in-between size or ability to stretch and shink the program box to a custom size, which would have been better. In addition, using the Taskbar to access your other programs is pretty worthless anyway, since the program won't work right if you have other programs running.
RECOMMENDATION:
* Give the Bicycle brand a try instead. Don't waste your money on what could have been a very nice piece of software.

Rating:
Summary: Newest revision of Hoyle Casino is the worst yet
Review: Part of the problem with Hoyle Casino has always been that the odds have been heavly weighted toward the computer players. With this new version, it is even worse. Playing in a poker tournament, the computer players are constantly getting 3 of a kind, full house, straights and flushes, while you never seem to be able to catch these. And when you do get a good hand, they somehow end up with a better one. Also, if I was playing at a blackjack table in Vegas where the dealer was continuously getting 20 and 21 every single hand, I would leave that table. I would recommend that you go somewhere else for a casino game, this one is terrible.

I wish that I had been able to play the game somewhere before I bought it, I never would have!!!

Two thumbs down

Rating:
Summary: board gamer
Review: same thing that you see the puzzle game Hoyle Puzzle 2004