Gin Rummy

There are quite a few card games on the Xbox Live Arcade. You’ve got Hearts, Spades, Solitaire and Texas Hold ‘Em, not to mention Uno, Ticket to Ride and Lost Cities. Well, the ranks have been swollen a little bit more by the addition of Gin Rummy, available now for 400 Microsoft points.

I’ll start by saying that I have no clue how to play Gin. I went through the tutorial and was taught, by the silhouette of a woman in a hat, how to play the game. It seemed quite straight-forward. You have 10 cards and the idea, from what I could gather, is to get a run of cards in a suit (3,4,5,6,7 etc) or a group of same value cards. When you think you’ve done all you can, you knock (hopefully before your opponent) and the round ends. The player with the lowest total of left-over cards is the winner. It really did sound simple. I played for quite some time. I didn’t win once.

That’s not a reflection on the game, it’s a reflection on my bad card skills but I did find that this was the hardest card-based game to get into. This is partly due to the quite clunky control system. You’re asked to confirm every button press, which just seems to ruin the flow of the game. Having never played Gin in real life, I can’t be sure that a person doesn’t come to you after every move and say “Are you sure?” but I’m reasonably convinced that they don’t.

Graphics wise, they’re really nothing to write home about – after all, this is a card game so there isn’t really much call for dynamic lighting and particle effects. As graphics go, they do what they need to do and are better than looking at a blank screen and as with most other card titles there are a variety of backgrounds to play against.

If you are a Gin fan, then there are six game modes available. I struggled enough with conventional Gin to fear going anywhere near Speedy Gin and siblings. As a single player game it really didn’t do much to grip me – it just didn’t have the thrill that even Texas Hold ‘Em possesses. I could see it being quite fun as a multiplayer game – the title has Xbox Live Vision capabilities – and could possibly be a more sophisticated (and somber) alternative to the garish colours and fasted paced fun of Uno.

If you do play Gin, and can’t find the time to get your Gin buddies together for a game then you could get some enjoyment out of this title. For anyone else, Gin Rummy is, maybe, a card game too far.