its a 100 point version of Tetris with 300 points worth of graphics and sparkly explosions. I'll buy next January it when its 100 points

Umm, two things...

1) It's nothing like tetris in any way

2) You should really at least try the demo before dismissing any game that you haven't played.

So wait a sec, you just link together blocks of the same color? The same routine and premise that we've done a hundred times already? So the poker theme was a gimmick all along? I actually though you were going to pair up different poker hands; pair, three of a kind, full house ect, and royal flush for maximum bonus. That would probably not worked out so well in reality but at least it would've been a different approach.

Oh, well, will try it out anyway.

Edit: Hold on, thats perhaps what the puzzle mode is doing? Similar to it at least. Then I'll take it all back.

I'm pretty sure you can link them up as poker hands in the regular version as well. Seems the video is a little misleading on this, I'll check to make sure!

 

You can always make all the poker hands (3 of a kind or better) in all the modes. The destructoid video showed someone making a lot of 3 of kinds (the easiest hand). The cards are color coded by rank to make the hands easier to see. Making the tougher hands is a lot of fun. For example making a straight flush requires a lot of planning.

This video made me want this game even more now damnit- cant wait til Wednesday! Btw, does anyone else recognize the similarities between this game and Tetris Attack (from SNES)? Since we don't have my favorite puzzle game Tetris Attack, this surely makes up for it. The poker ideas seem to merge very well with the puzzle elements. AWESOME!

This is a game that combines the best of 2 worlds. Poker and puzzle games. This could be up there in terms of puzzle games, with Puzzle Quest. The best puzzler on XBLA.

i dont need the demo, i watched the video. It showed a tetris derivative where you combine groups of Xs and groups of Ys and groups of Zs into multiples of 3 and 4 and they go BLAMO! KPOWIEE! EXPLODIEEE!! and you think to yourself, 'wow look at those colors. i must be having some sort of fun here.' from the video, I saw nothing that involved poker - I just saw a game where various rows of colored gemstones were replaced with playing cards.

You're focusing on the colours and not the cards.

All games are the same though, every last one of them. Just a bunch of 1s and 0s you press buttons to.

I disagree. Puzzle Quest is the perfect example for my side of the discussion - they took the same worn out bejeweled template and gave it a huge shot in the arm. They added RPG elements, they added story elements, and they added some nice 'style point' elements that made the game a fresh take on an old idea. Replacing graphics with playing cards and borrowing effects from boom boom rocket - I dunno. Not worth more than 100 points for me. There's just not enough 'new elements' there.