iPad App BreakDown: UNO HD
UNO™ HD ($4.99) by Gameloft UNO is a classic card game that has a basic connection to crazy 8s, but is spiced up with multiple special cards. Gameloft has brought a digital version to the iPhone, and now the iPad.
The game itself: UNO is a fun card game that adds a whole new mix of strategy of when to play special cards like skip, reverse, draw 2, and wild cards. The digital version is definitely fun giving you the whole game without having those cards all around. The game lets you play single player in a tournament as well as multiplayer either on the same device or connecting with other ipads as well as iPhones and iPod Touches.
The execution on the touch screen isn't the best making it quite a hassle to play. The UI just doesn't work as well as it could so dragging a card to the stack or dragging through your cards sometime requires multiple attempts. The game requires a lot of taps to show your cards, go through your cards, and other double taps to play a card as an alternative to dragging.
There are other problems with the game where you don't even know when you're doing something. Cards were switched between players multiple times during a game for no apparent reason, and yet couldn't be recreated when wanted to be. Gameloft live is included which is still extremely disappointing.
The game has some good features including the ability to play multiplayer on one iPad, against smaller devices, and even online. The one iPad multiplayer is a little weak since you cup you hands to cover your cards, but the game doesn't recognize anything you're doing. The game also saves your exact progress on exit.
Another problem is that no matter when you play whether alone or with friends it seems that when anyone is ever close to UNO, cards come up to not allow the human player to do so. Games drag on forever as always the right or wrong card, depending on perspective, appears prolonging the game. The randomness of an actual deck of cards seems to be taken out of the game.
Overall the fun of UNO is taken away by the problems in the digital version making it a game not worth $4.99.
If you own the iPhone version: If you already own the iPhone version, it's too bad I couldn't have warned you sooner. It's funny that the version probably plays better on the iPad than the iPad specific version, but not by much. The visual difference isn't that big, so if you must get some use out of the UNO you already bought then put it on your iPad, but stay away from the HD version with no new content or capabilities.
If you only own an iPad: If you only own an iPad there are many better apps to buy than UNO HD. If you're a huge fan of UNO you may be able to suffer through the problems, but only if you're a huge fan. Gameloft just didn't do a good job making a digital version of this game.
If you never bought the iPhone version: If you never bought the iPhone version now is not the time to start. The iPhone version is just as bad as the iPad version with the same problems. It's also priced at the same $4.99. There are tons of better iPhone apps you can get for $5.
