Those looking at Poker Smash on the XLBA, scratching their heads wondering, "Why do I need another Arcade Poker game?", might want to take a closer look. Yes, there are cards here, but it is certainly not a game of actual poker, although a good working knowledge of poker hands will serve you well. It is your basic match-three puzzle game with a twist. Not nearly the genre expanding twist of Puzzle Quest's RPG elements, but it does more than Bejeweled or the other typical gem-matching puzzlers.
Poker Smash takes the basic match-three items and puts a card skin on top of it, then tweaks it to the point it seems somewhat fresh. Rather than matching similarly colored or shaped gems, the game fills the board with one of five different cards, ten through ace. As with a real deck of cards, each card has its value and a suit. Your task is to clear cards by making real poker hands vertically or horizontally. Clearing hands start with three of a kind and range upwards to a full house, a straight, and even five to nine card flushes. The game begins with several lines of cards pushing up from below the board, slowly at first.
Just like real poker, gamers must take careful note of their cards, so they do not miss potential killer hands. The game does a great job of matching up real poker hands, from a flush to five of a kind. As the game pushes along, the scroll time speeds up to the point that gamers will want to keep a careful eye on the top of the board to shift high-standing cards lower on the board to columns not so high. Although a slight change, the game's control scheme works much better than the typical 'select with 'A', then move' functionality. Instead, the game puts both the left and right stick to good use. Gamers use the left stick to select the card they want to move, and slide it left or right with the right stick. It saves the aggravation of accidentally selecting the wrong card, making the controls feel much more fluid and, more importantly, responsive.
There is some strategy to it all, as you can set up some nice 'chains' as your cards clear and those above them drop down accordingly, making new matches. There are achievements for getting three, five, seven, and nine time matching chains. At the time of this review, the scrolling leader board at the game's main menu was showing off gamertags with chains in the upper twenties and beyond, an impressive feat, to say the least. Lower levels of chains can be relatively easy to attain, as your matching 'hand' is highlighted and locked for a moment; giving you ample opportunity to slide cards over it in an attempt to create a chain for when they drop down. As the game moves forward, it makes these moves harder and more exciting to pull off.
When you notice your scroll speed moving a little too slowly, or quickly, for you, the triggers are your answer. The left trigger will speed up the scrolling as long as you hold it, quickly pushing up new rows of cards from the bottom of the board; making those hard to gain chains attainable. The right trigger allows you to temporarily slow time, in an attempt to assist you remove cards dangerously edging closer to the ever-present red line at the top. The time you have to keep things moving at a snail's pace is limited by a consonantly, but slowly, refilling meter to the right of your board, which also tracks your 'bombs'. Selecting a card and hitting 'A' will drop a bomb on it, clearing it from the board and making all cards above it fall appropriately. They, too, are limited and replenished as you play through the board.
