Hardwood Hearts - Review

Added February 12th, 2006 by Kisan Parikh

Hardwood Hearts, one of three other Hardwood games currently found on Xbox Live Arcade, is a simple console version of the card game, Hearts. The game is translated well onto console, but you won’t find anything flashy. Just as the other Hardwood games, Hardwood Hearts is not particularly bad, just a bit bland.

The game of hearts is played with four people, in a manner somewhat similar to Spades. Players go around the table playing their card of choice with the goal of having the least points at the end of the game. The player with the highest card wins the trick. For each heart on the table, the player gains a point. The added twist in Hearts is the fact that the Queen of Spades card delivers a whopping 13 points, which can change a game in just one hand. Shooting the Moon is the riskiest way to play in which a player attempts to acquire all heart-suited cards and the Queen of Spades, ensuring an automatic victory.

For those who are new to the game of Hearts, the Hardwood version does feature a fairly detailed tutorial. You can learn the basics of the game, finer details about passing, and more. You may need to watch the tutorials about the game in general, but you definitely won’t need them for the controls. The game mainly involves using the left thumbstick and A button to play the card of your choice.

The console version of the game offers a few easily modified options to allow gamers to play how they want. You are able to play a variation of the game called Spot Hearts. This option makes heart cards worth their face value and the Queen of Spades worth 50 points. Additionally, you can change the length of the game and point values needed to end a game.

You will, of course, be able to take the game online via Xbox Live. Xbox Live play is fairly straightforward. You have all the standard options such as: Ranked Games, Unranked Games, and Leaderboards. Both ways to play are enjoyable, but the better half of Hardwood Hearts is the online portion.

Visually, the game is pretty lackluster, with basic backdrops and tables. The game features Fooms, emoticon-like animations, so you will get to see some sparkly things run across the screen. The music of Hardwood Hearts is the same repetitive track we heard with the other two games, so you will need to fire up your custom soundtracks. Again, there isn’t anything flashy or exciting about this game; it just brings Hearts to the Xbox 360.

Summary:

Just like the other games in the Hardwood series, Hardwood Hearts is a simple game that merely brings a game to the Xbox 360. Plain visuals, repetitive audio, and straightforward gameplay make up this title’s feature list. Hearts fans will, of course, enjoy playing online, but most can be content with the Hearts game included with Windows XP, saving their 400 MS Points for something else.