The Card: Poker, Texas Hold’em, Blackjack, and Page One

Genre: Compilation / Card Games

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

The Card, released on the Nintendo Switch in 2018, is a Compilation of four card games: Five Card Draw Poker, Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, Blackjack, and Page One (this last game, for those unfamiliar, is a little like the Card Game Uno). As these games are classic card games and likely older than anyone currently reading this review, I’ll be focusing mainly on the presentation, features, options, and performance of this game.

The presentation here is okay, but nothing special. The cards and tables here look pretty basic, and players can only alter the appearance of the cards… and only after unlocking new card backs. The music here is pretty unimpressive too, and while I suppose it fits the theme well enough, it’s not at all memorable.

As far as options go, there’s not much. No variants, no modifiers, nothing. Oddly, players need to choose how many hands of a particular game they’re in for before selecting the game. All of these games include instructions on how to play, but no tutorial, and nothing I saw indicated much of the strategy behind the games. Oh, and on the topic of options and strategy, players will be facing off against only computer-controlled opponents, and as these opponents have no personalities or readable “tells”, games like poker get bland pretty quickly. An online leaderboard is the only interaction you’ll have with other players here.

The controls here are pretty good, with decent gamepad and touchscreen controls. Not really much to say about these except they work well enough.

At the very least, the price is right. For $5, a collection of four card games seems decent, and while this game is severely lacking in features and doesn’t impress with its visuals, it’s hard to complain when it delivers on the basic core experience of each of the card games in question, minus multiplayer play. If that’s a sticking point for you, this collection won’t be for you, but if you’re just looking for a cheap game of blackjack or poker, this Compilation should prove to be sufficient.

tl;dr –The Card: Poker, Texas Hold’em, Blackjack, and Page One is a decent but unspectacular collection of the four games in question. It doesn’t have a very impressive presentation, and it lacks options, variants, and most importantly multiplayer, but for $5 this is an acceptable collection of these four Card Games.

Grade: C

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