Aces Blackjack Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

Pontoon for professionals

There is only so much you can do with a Blackjack game. There has been quite a few attempts to liven it up with high rolling aspects as seen in Blackjack Hustler and Scratch City: Blackjack where you take part in tournaments and try and hustle your way to the top of the 21 ladder. The above games come from established developers that make generic mobile games. Aces Blackjack comes from a dedicated poker games developer and naturally their take on 21 is much more orthodox.

There's no messing around with unlockable casinos or special tournaments. It's just Blackjack for your Pocket PC. Sounds boring? Well it's about as exciting as Blackjack gets I'm afraid. However, Concrete Software have given a couple of twists to the game with two extra modes and a comprehensive options menu. As with their Poker games suite, you can play in landscape or portrait and the game stores all the statistics for you to mull over. In addition to that they have also included a little crib sheet. You can use this to decide which tactic is best based on your opening cards and those of the dealer's. It's all based on statistics and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Apart from the normal mode, there is also a Timed mode which plays for 5 minutes or a Challenge mode where you have 30 hands to get as much money as possible. At the end of the round, your final score is stored in the high scores table (if it??????s good enough).

The cards are large and well detailed and there??????s no mistaking your club for a spade or a Jack for a Queen. You can play the game using either the touch screen or the D-pad. If you like playing quickly then I would advise playing with the stylus and touch screen and not with the actual buttons. Incessantly pressing the buttons in attempt to speed the game up will only make the handset preempt your moves and automatically takes the bet and assumes you want to stand. You have been warned.

Other than those couple of fancy features it's basically Blackjack that you would find in the casinos except without the free drinks, sexy croupiers and importantly no fellow players. If you are looking for an accurate simulation of one-on-one action to hone your skills then this is for you. If you prefer the gimmicks of career modes and tournaments then sadly this one aint your bag. It is a very well put together package but for the money and the handset I would have expected something more to really work my phone's processor.