Uno
UNO, the classic card game of skips, draw-twos, and reverses, has come to the Game Boy Advance. There are two modes of play: Standard and Challenge. Standard has the players keep going until they reach a specified number of points, usually 1000. However, a player only scores points when he gets rid of all the cards in his hand. The points are the total value of the cards left in the opposition's hands. In Challenge, each player has a set number of points, and a player is eliminated when he reaches the point total. Play continues until one player is left standing. In both modes, you can play against up to three computer-controlled opponents. You can also play a single human opponent via a link cable. As an added bonus, there are three new cards that are not part of the real-world game. Now you can play UNO by yourself.
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the ui is hard to keep track of: turns rush by because your opponents moves aren't depicted much at all. when they are depicted, it's through brutally long special card animations that have you begging for them to end. numbers on the cards are a little too small, it's hard to read. it's very easy to accidentally press b instead of a and draw, even when you do not need to draw. why not just assign drawing to a when you hover over the pile? it's much more intuitive. you call uno with select, i personally found myself accidentally pausing. it's not too much of a pain to unpause of course, but why not assign uno to b? you're forced to play with uno's point system too. don't worry: i also didn't know uno had a point system.
the worst issue is the eyestrain. as mentioned, the numbers on the corner of the cards are small, but the cards under "space" and "groovy" are painful to read, and the carpeted 90's table pattern of "standard" makes the game hard to look at for longer than two minutes. i recommend "wild west" above all other themes: legible cards and an awesome horsey in the background.
yeah, this game has themes! which is a fun idea. each game starts with a settings menu, where you pick your number of players and theme and etceteras. luckily in here you can turn off the special card animations (and also just the regular card flipping animations) which i do appreciate. but automatically they come turned on, and that's assumedly the creators vision.
after everything, it's still uno. at the end of the day, uno remains. but i find myself longing for the anime icon reactions of uno: small world. uno (1999) holds little charm and longevity.