I reviewed Astraware Casino for Symbian a few months ago, and now it has been released for Android! At the time, this is what I thought of AW Casino:
Overall, AW Casino is a great addition to any phone; it offers you a huge selection of games to pass the time, is great for learning the basics of casino games, and is generally very entertaining. If you have a Symbian S60 phone, it’s definitely worth trying.
Does the Android version live up to it’s Symbian cousin? Read on for my review and find out!
Visually, the Android version is stunning. Generally, things look stunning on the Droid, and Casino is no exception. It looks almost image for image like the Symbian version, but more high-resolution. The nice thing was that unlike its Symbian cousin, I didn’t have to use the d-pad to navigate, which made gameplay move much faster. It didn’t make me any better at poker though.
The downside of the images being so similar is that everything feels smaller than it could, given the expanse of screen available. Impressively, even though everything seems very cramped I had very few mis-presses. Disappointingly, though, the menu structure is exactly the same as it is on a non-touchscreen device, instead of a more Android-esque set of large, touchable buttons. I also noticed that it didn’t utilize the back button at all; hitting the back button dropped me back to the homescreen instead of to the title menu like I kept expecting. To get to the title menu, I had to hit the Droid’s menu key, then select the teeny “title menu” option.
While the game worked great in both horizontal and vertical modes, I liked it better in horizontal mode. It gave the game room to stretch, and everything seemed to pop more.
Gameplay was exactly the same as the Symbian version. Animations were fast and smooth, the sound effects were fun, and I am still godawful at poker. Some things never change!
Overall, for $1.99 in the Android Market, this is a great buy. You get a huge selection of fun games, and you can practice your strategies for your next weekend in Vegas!
What I Like: Games looked visually stunning; Nice selection of games; Fast and smooth animations
What Needs Improvement: Did not fully take advantage of Android menu and button controls; Very tiny buttons and menus
