Uno is not only a fun game but it also has a long history. Uno is an American card game that is played with a specially printed deck. The game was originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins in Reading, Ohio. It has been a Mattel brand since 1992. Ubisoft and Mattel have an established partnership and many popular Mattel board games have been brought over to consoles and other devices by Ubisoft. The aim in Uno is simple, get rid of all the cards in your deck by playing cunning hands. You can also win by scoring points but getting rid of all your cards is the way to go.
I’m not sure what the rules are in real life but in the digital version of Uno, four players can compete to win. The turns rotate clockwise and that also applies to how penalties are added. For those of you that don’t know, you basically have to match colors and numbers. For example, if your opponent throws down a red card with the number six on it, you can either throw down a red card or any other colored card which has six on it. However, if you don’t have the card in your limited deck, you have to pick one up.
There are also other penalty cards that can add four cards to your opponent’s deck and even change the color of the card required. They come in handy if you run out of playable ones. However, if you play these penalty cards knowing that you had valid options, then another player can challenge you and you can get penalized too. It’s quite a complex game which a thorough tutorial teaches you in the game. Even if you aren’t familiar with the title, you can easily pick it up. The game appeals to everyone and is definitely a fun party title.
The best way to compare and contrast Uno would have to be with another Ubisoft title that recently came out, Battleship. While Battleship suffered from long load times and other oddities like stutters, Uno runs well on the Xbox One. I never encountered anything comparable to my experience with Battleship. However, Uno also has less features due to the less complex nature of the game. It lacks a campaign but makes up for it by introducing other card deck which you can unlock. There’s a Raving Rabbids deck which changes the game quite a bit but honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it. The rules seemed weird and I had no clue what was going on. The standard mode is the most fun. If you want to change things up, you can always modify the rules before each game.
You can play Uno with your friends online and the system works rather well. It’s not groundbreaking by any means and setting up a game can sometimes be tricky but it works. Playing with your friends is the highlight of the experience even though it needs significant improvements in my opinion. Luckily, you can always play single-player and it’s still satisfying.
Summary
Overall, Uno is a great game which needs more polish to be exceptional. It offers a basic Uno experience which needs more content. There’s an option in the menu which teases DLC but that will probably be an additional cost to the player. An expansion of the multiplayer features will greatly benefit the title but even in its current state, Uno is addictive and if you’re a fan of the physical card game, buy this version on Xbox One.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.