Review: Uno And Friends (Xbox Live)
Score:
55%
Hold on, Gameloft releasing Uno for Windows Phone? Haven't they done this already? Indeed they have, but Uno And Friends has something that was missing from the previous release... online multiplayer through your Xbox Live account. But it also has an expensive sting in the tail.
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0.0
The game of Uno is well known, a card is at the top of the discard pile, and you can play any of your cards with a matching colour or number. Some cards are modifiers, reversing the order of play within the four players, making the next person skip a turn, pick up extra cards, or change the colour in play. Yes, you can play it with playing cards but changing it to a specific deck of cards made Uno protectable IP, and the franchise has done very well. It also means there can be a lot more cards in play.
On your Windows Phone you will see all your cards, and a slide of your finger along the line will expose the cards, tapping on a card will play it in the game. It feels a touch clunky in use, a definite two stage process, as opposed to a slide along and throw out which feels more natural, but it does make it much harder to mistakenly play the wrong card.
With bright primary colours and distinct numbers, it's very easy to distinguish all the card types in your hand, and the visual cues on the rest of the screen to the stock pile, discard pile and other players give you all the information you need when in the middle of a game.
One thing to stress here is that Uno And Friends is only for online multiplayer gaming. There's no hot seat game to pass around your friends, there's no local Wi-fi options, and neither is there a computer AI to challenge yourself against. Yes, the single player facility is in Gameloft's first Uno game for Windows Phone (which is thankfully still available) but making it online multiplayer or nothing is a strange choice if all you look at is the gaming side of things. No online connection? No game.
But the dark side of Uno and Friends is Gameloft's income stream.
You have to pay each time you start a game. These tokens can be slowly earned through the game, or you can buy them online. If you end up playing Uno a lot, you'll need to use a lot of tokens. Where are you going to get them? By paying cash for a top up. Uno could end up being a very expensive game.
And like a sneaky pusher, you can buy tokens or buy scratch-cards to win tokens. In the latter, you can 'win' tokens that you will need to spend to play the game. If you're a frequent player, you can either buy the tokens, or gamble (for a bit less money) to potentially win more tokens to start a game. We raise our eyes at £6 for Halo Spartan Assault, but that's just three scratchcard purchases. And again, like a cunning freemium game, you do get some scratches for free to get you used to it... the first hit is always free.
Then there are the game modifiers. 'Buffing' your ability with these boosts allows you to play different strategies, but the key here is that if you have buffs, and other players don't have buffs, it will be far easier to win the game. Naturally these buffs cost coins (not tokens, pay attention, two currencies) and you'll win some coins as you play, but they won't be enough to feed the habit, so out will come the credit card and another in-game purchase.
That's the same all over for the two in-game currencies. You start with enough to enjoy them (at least in the short term) and then the time comes to try and live without them. At which point you're going to be spending a lot more than Halo - and at least Halo lets you play as many games as you want for free and you could win without using any buffs.
The point here is that Gameloft is charging you in game tokens and coins which have a real world value at every point to play this game, and if you want to cheat (sorry, use modifiers) then they'll charge you for that as well. Sure you can earn them in the game, but if you top up with cash you'll get more games and more buffs to play with. And that is fundamentally unbalancing.
Not to mention utterly frustrating when your Windows Phone drops the connection to the network, and the money and coins spent on a game are not refunded to you. I'm not sure how Gameloft should handle that, but then it's not my job to. They decided this model, they should have something in place because mobile devices are, inherently, unreliable in terms of coverage.
I think the biggest issue I have with Uno And Friends is this. The core game, the experience, the multiplayer and connected game play between random gamers or your friends, is actually a really good game. The graphics look good, sounds are crisp and sharp, and you can forgive the slow pace of a game because you know someone is agonising over their next move. Okay, the controls could be a bit nicer, and it's not the fastest of user interfaces outside of the game, but it does the job.
And then Gameloft smother that well implemented game with a huge coating of freemium.
There's a right way and a wrong way to do freemium games. Much as Uno and Friends looks great, plays well, and has a nice concept behind it, I'm passing on it because of the income model Gameloft have employed. You might have a different opinion on that, but for me I don't want to feel that the game in my pocket is slowly draining everything out of my wallet.
Thanks Gameloft, but no thanks.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at