Have you ever just wanted to furiously throw pieces of paper with numbers on them onto other pieces of paper with numbers on them? So did we, and now you can too with Uno Rush!
The original Uno has been sitting in the top ten most bought Xbox Live Arcade games for the week since it’s release, so it would only make sense to release a sequel. Uno Rush takes everything from the original, and adds a bit of speed, a bit more colors, and a whole lot of sparkles!
Cards, Colors, Sparkles, and Smiles!
I’m sure most of you know the whole concept behind Uno, but in case you don’t, you get dealt cards, with numbers, different colors, wilds, and some special cards. In the middle of all the players is a discard pile, and you can lay a single card of the same color or number as the top card when it is your turn. You also can lay a wild, or wild draw four, which let’s you select the color you want, and forces the next player in line to draw four cards. The other special cards (Skip, Reverse, Draw Two) are pretty self explanatory. If you don’t have a card you can play, then you must draw a card. Once you are down to two cards, and you lay down another card, you must declare Uno, to let everyone know you are going to go out. The first person to go out wins.
Cry me a river
Well in Uno Rush, the concept is the same, except for few very key differences. First off, you can lay as many cards that you possibly can with the card on top of the discard pile when it is your turn. Example: It’s your turn, and the top card is a red six, you have four red cards, you can play all them. Secondly, there is a shuffle card that shuffles the next players hand. Also, you see everyone’s cards the entire game, which is key to strategize your next move. Lastly, the game play is a lot quicker, and the game automatically plays the cards you have lined up until you can’t play anymore.
This game is a challenge at first
The pure speed of the game is intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it you will be laying eight or nine cards at a time, making runs of colors, and switching between other colors in your hand by using runs of the same number. The main gameplay essentially boils down to fast card sorting, as that is what you will be doing most of the time. Arranging your cards to be played automatically when it is your turn sounds boring, but it is actually very fun, yet frustrating. It sucks when you have a great line up and you are moving your last card into place and it’s your turn and you blow the whole thing due to not being fast enough.
House rules are still available to tweak however you please
Uno Rush has may be fun, but it also has it’s share of flaws. First off, the controls aren’t as fast as they need to be. Moving cards around can sometimes be too slow, and hitting the analog stick faster doesn’t seem to help, of course this may be on purpose cause it does make you feel rushed. Also, anyone who has played the original Uno will notice that the menus and user interface look nearly identical, making this feel like it could have been download content, instead of a $10 stand alone game. On top of that, I just don’t get what the point of the wild card roulette is, if the roulette just slows down so you can pick your color anyways, it just wastes time and slows the game down. They could have mapped each color to a button on the controller, but instead they just had to have a colorful roulette. Lastly, the online community is nearly non-existent when compared to the original games thriving community.
Did I mention they SERIOUSLY love sparkles?
Recommendation:
Do you like Uno? Do you have three friends that you could Uno Rush with? Are you an achievement whore? If you answered yes to any of these questions Uno Rush is for you! I found it to be an enjoyable experience, and I answered yes to all the above questions.
Uno Rush
System: Xbox Live Arcade
Developer: Microsoft
Publisher: Microsoft
Find: Xbox Live Marketplace or Amazon
All reviews are based on final retail code unless otherwise noted.
May 17th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
“If I jumped off a bridge would you too?!”
“Of course, I love you.”
Genius. This version is alright but not nearly as relaxing as the first one which, for the record, was only $5.
Also, don’t play with Melissa Kay. She will constantly turn off her Xbox and then be all like “OMG it froze right as I was about to win, WTF?!”
May 17th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Ha it never gets old seeing people quote us.
The classic it froze line, cause you know, running a game that is no harder to run than a flash game does that to Xbox 360 haha.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:57 am
I can vouch for Melissa, I had my Xbox freeze anywhere between 5-10 times when I was playing this. It’s a shame that ordering cards is relatively slow, and it’s double the price of UNO. However, UNO RUSH is definitely enjoyable, even though most of my time was spent rolling my Avatar’s head around. Cos I’m so funny.