PokerKnight
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Daily iPhone App: Poker Knight combines poker hands with an RPG
Poker Knight is a game that I was really excited to see coming to the App Store. I'm a big fan of poker, and I'm a big fan of role-playing games, so when that trailer arrived, I was right away looking forward to seeing what this one was like. Unfortunately, it didn't quite live up to my expectations. It's not a bad game, but the original premise of combining poker with an RPG isn't exactly what this is. Instead, it's a game that combines poker hands with an RPG. You wander around a fantasy world fighting monsters and earning XP as usual, but instead of actually playing Texas Hold'em, you're just choosing cards and putting them together into the best hands possible. You can see it in action below -- it's not the best card game ever made, but the graphics do look nice, and as you play it more and more, you do start thinking in that poker mindset of seeing how the cards fit together. There's also a magical amulet mechanic later on that mixes up the gameplay a bit more, but basically this is a matching game with that RPG foundation. It's not bad, and if the game still intrigues you, it's worth the US$1.99 to see how it plays, especially on a newer iPhone or iPad. But unfortunately this isn't exactly the most hardcore poker game around. For that you'll still have to stick to one of the many variants already available on the App Store.
A trio of trailers: Vectrex Regeneration, Baldur's Gate Enhanced and Poker Knight
Well, it happened -- Thanksgiving was last week, Cyber Monday is today and from here on out, we are neck deep in the holiday season. This time of year is particularly busy on the App Store, as various game developers try to get their best products out during the holiday rush, taking advantage of all of those game-hungry users with brand new iDevices. To that end, we've got not one, not two, but three great trailers for upcoming iOS games that we've been waiting for, all ready for you to watch below. Vectrex Regeneration is first -- this is not just a game, but a complete emulator for the old Vectrex video game console. The app includes more than a few old titles (available for in-app purchase, with likely a few freebies to get you interested), and will be out on the App Store later this week. Next up is a new trailer for that Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate that we've been expecting on iOS for a while now. As you can see in the video below, this game will be a very faithful (perhaps too faithful?) recreation of the old Baldur's Gate title, except of course that it'll be running on your iPad instead of a computer. Old-school fans will probably love this one, but we'll have to wait and see if it can grab a new audience later on this month. And finally, I haven't heard of Poker Knight until now, but it's piqued my interest big time with the trailer below. The idea looks like a poker game mixed with some fantasy RPG elements, and there's nothing I like better than a genre-crossing puzzle/RPG concoction like that. Poker Knight is due out some time this month as well, so we'll look for it soon. All three of these look great, and they're just a small sampling of what we're in for from the App Store this coming holiday season.
