Care to take part in a little old-fashioned casino squandering at home? Sierra's Hoyle Casino lets you take in all the excitement of high-rolling in Vegas, complete with chatty opponents, witty croupiers, and free drinks (just kidding). You may have to "BYOB" to this parlor, but Sierra has made it well worth a few hours of sobriety to appreciate all the extra trimmings they invested in the game.
Hoyle Casino drops you into a fully stocked game parlor with 5,000 smackers to spend away as you please. Five lushly detailed games - Roulette, Slot Machines, Craps, a variety of Poker games, and the original Hoyle Blackjack - are all available for your perusal and gambling enjoyment. You can wander around the casino point-and-click fashion to choose a table or simply select a game from a pull-down menu. Lose all your dough? Try to scrape up a few bucks on the nickel slots to throw down on the pass-line, or hit up the local loan sharks when the casino denizens unexpectedly turn the tables on you.
And what would Vegas gambling be without the bizarre mixture of personalities you normally encounter on the casino floor? You'll run into a few familiar faces from the original Hoyle Blackjack - the sardonic James Bond character, the capricious southern gentleman, the tough guy who swills his beer every few minutes - plus some new characters, each with his own commentary and actions. Both haughty and humorous, the gambling patrons and pit bosses you're often sharing a table with really add to the casino atmosphere - though you may at times feel like chucking all your chips at them. Fortunately, if you're the type of player who just likes to sit down and gamble seriously, you can just turn the attitude meter down and everyone will shut up.
Any fan of gambling games who appreciates subtle details will enjoy Hoyle Casino. Following in the tradition of the Sierra Hoyle series, everything from the roulette wheel to the craps dice has been rendered with the most tactile detail. And the games are presented just how computer gamblers like them: nice and straightforward. The title's only fault lies in the fact that it's just another casino game. Who knows what's on the horizon - maybe someday, they'll come out with a casino sim where you have to engage in gun battles with loan sharks or argue with contestants to obtain clues. Until something truly innovative in the way of computer parlor games comes around, you can bet that the majority of gamers looking for a safe gamble will parlay their hard-earned dollars for this title.
