The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Do you like Poker?
Your answer to that question is irrelevant to this game.

Do you like Puzzle League/Tetris Attack/Panel De Pon?
If the answer is yes, and you have a 360, you must play Poker Smash.

Take the blocks from Puzzle League. Associate each color with a playing card from 10-A. Put an additional suit on each block. That’s Poker Smash. All your normal puzzle league moves work just like normal, but in addition to your normal clears, you can also make various Poker hands, like Full Houses, Flushes, and Straights, in order to clear blocks for even bigger points than usual.
The controls work really well. Normally, controls would be kind of… pointless to talk about in a puzzle game like this, but the two-stick scheme they use is intuitive and lets them do some neat things. Basically, you move the cursor with the left stick, and slide the tiles with the right. This lets them do things you can’t do in puzzle league because of you having to tap to flip things, like dragging tiles past groups of tiles that would normally trigger a clear to use them somewhere else.
Other welcome changes include a Bullet Time meter which you can activate at any time by pulling the right trigger. I find it easy to forget, but if you spot a way to get an extra chain out of what you’re doing, holding down that trigger can help you make it happen. It recharges over time. You can also place bombs with the A button. You start with five, and a meter charges up to replace bombs you’ve used as you clear titles. The bombs will basically destroy the tile you put them on, letting you easily set up 2x’s Chains and get you out of sticky situations. It also freezes the scroll while the bomb’s fuse is going off, so you can use that to set up some additional clears. Both of these make the game a little easier earlier on, but once you get up to the fast, insane speeds, you’ll welcome these additional tools that give you more to think about. They connect with the game flawlessly.
The game comes with all the standard features for this stuff: A full Puzzle Mode, both Timed and Endless score attack modes, and full multiplayer for up to 4 people on Xbox Live, or two people split screen. There is also a little store you can buy skins to use in the game, and set up “custom playlists” of skins for the game to cycle through, so it only uses your favorites. It all works great. And it’s only 800 Microsoft Bucks. That’s $10. Considering the number of times I have bought copies of Puzzle League for $30 dollars over the years, that’s a steal.
One other thing I wanted to mention was the cleverness of one achievement I worked for and got today. There’s an achievement called “Self-restraint” that calls for you to go from speed 1 to speed 7 without making anything but 3 Combos. (They call them 3 of a Kinds, because of the poker theme, of course) This was really quite difficult, and really made me look at the game in a completely different way than I normally do. This is an example of a “Good Achievement” in my book.

I was about to skip this game, because I have little love of Poker. All the talk on 1up Yours made me decide to download the demo and try it. I bought it immediately after playing for like 5 minutes. If you like Puzzle League, this purchase is seriously a no-brainer. If you like puzzlers, why don’t you play Puzzle League? Also, you should try Poker Smash. It gets my crazy awesome seal of crazy awesome blogging approval.