Daily iPhone App: Poker Pals

I'll admit it: I never got into Words with Friends. I know it's a very popular and well-done game, but for some reason, Scrabble-style titles never appealed to me. But Poker Pals, a social title recently published by Chillingo and developed by Aspyr, scratches the same itch for me.

Instead of using titles to spell words, you instead use them to make poker hands, and you get points for making the rarest ones. There are joker cards on each of the four corners that will line up to match whatever you put near them, and since the board is a little smaller than the standard Scrabble board (not to mention that every "hand" you make is five cards), I find it a little faster and more interesting than word-making games.

Poker Pals is integrated with Game Center, and asynchronous play is smooth and well-done. The one big issue with the game is that Chillingo is still clinging to their own social network, Crystal, so the achievements and leaderboards are all tied up in that. It's a pain having to run two social networks, and frankly I haven't even bothered with a Crystal account, so I have no idea where I rate on the leaderboards. I've also only played the game on one platform so far, but the iTunes reviews for it say you can't sync accounts across two devices. That's a bummer if you want to play on iPad and the iPhone at the same time.

But outside of the issues with the metagame, the core game is a lot of fun (especially as an asynchronous title), and you can start games with friends right through Game Center anyway. Poker Pals is available on the iPhone for just a buck, on the iPad in HD for $1.99, or as a free trial version on either platform.