Pinochle Gold at Mac App Store analyse

Very easy to use game. Plays great.

The biggest problem with this game is that your partner doesnt play very well. It will bid 35 plus and have 4 meld, so expect to lose a lot.

Card faces are distorted, text spills over text---a complete mess.

Excellent game! As one of the seemingly few pinochle players out there, I saw this game, it was an instant buy, and I am happily satisfied. Never saw for the iPhone, so cannot compare, but looks like a full iPad app, not just blown up. I have yet to experiment with all the different levels of bidding intensity, but the sheer number of options over gameplay lets you play the game however you are used to, which makes playing really enjoyable. There are a couple options that I would like to see added that Id thought were common enough rule variations I was surprised they were not already: 1.) Id always thought you had to take the bid to go out (win the game). This is not the case, whoever is first to 150 wins, fine, but would be cool to toggle off/on. 2.) Speaking of 150, why must we live with 150 as the game winning score? Would be nice to be able to set if you wanted to play a nice long game, especially given everything else you can control. 3.) Ive also played with people who differ over the rule of whether you have to beat a non-trump suited card if you can. The opposing school plays that you must follow suit at all times (of course), but you only must play a higher card than what is down if it is trump, and still others, only if trump is led. Granted this is splitting rule hairs, but if the developers enjoy adding customizability, theres some ammunition. The rating is five stars; Im quite happy even if none of these options get added, but Ill up my rating to six+ if they ever are.

Pinochle is a game thats not very well standardized, but there is enough flexibility here to allow most people to find something reasonably close to the rule set theyre accustomed to. The interface is good, but not great. There should be an option, for example, to play forced cards automatically, and it would also be nice if the computer didnt make you play out every trick even when one player is "trump tight" and all the other trumps are drawn. When its time to play from a fairly full hand, the cards are spread out, presumably to make the right one easier to choose. This might be needful on the iPhone, but unfortunately on the iPad it has exactly the opposite effect--the card you intend to play has become a moving target, and you need to find it again before you can play it. The AI for the computer players is dreadful. Perhaps this is to be expected--it would be difficult to program appropriate play for all of the different permutations of the rules that the program supports. But as it is, youre unlikely to lose many games to the iPad once you learn a bit about how it plays. All in all, a decent program, and one that I hope will get better

"Pinochle on iPad" is a very basic interpretation of the game. While is has options available to set up many of the differing playing styles, this game has some serious shortcomings, especially in the AI. I have found the computer players very easy to set as they always seem to raise the bid beyond what their hands can support. The game does not seem to have the notion of a meld bid and your computer "partner" does not really contribute. The graphics are very basic and even the hands holding the cards do not change to reflect the number of tricks left in the hand. All of this could be acceptable if the game was built on a solid AI but for now this Pinochle is more annoying than realistic to play and I would not recommend it unless you are trying to teach novice players the basics of the game. 15 August 2010

Great game, but could you please fix it so the guy on my right doesnt get a double run all the time. Nobody gets that many double runs in real life. And could you make my partner just a little smarter than what he is?