Hey there, Stanley Wilson here with your daily dose of technologically-infused casino extravaganza! Raise your hand if you only use your smartphone for talking, texting and nothing else. Come on, anyone? Oh, I can see one guy in the back over there! You, sir, are an idiot – you have in your hands a device with more processing power than the computer that put people on the Moon (like, WAY more), and you’re wasting its potential by just… talking on it? What is this, a flip-phone from the early 2000s? Ridiculous! “But Mr. Wilson”, I hear you say, “What else am I supposed to do with it?” Well, first off, don’t call me Mr. Wilson, I feel like I ought to be chasing Dennis the Menace around or something. Second, according to Statista there’s currently over 1.6 million apps on the Google Store and 1.5 million on the Apple store. And even if we take Sturgeon’s Law, aka “90% of everything is crap”, into consideration, that still leaves over 150 000 apps for you to enjoy! If you spent 5 minutes with each of these apps, without counting the time it’d take you to install them and also stuff like sleeping, eating or having a healthy social life (I only do one of those things anyway), it’d still take you almost 2 whole years to go through them all, and by that time their number would’ve probably doubled.

“But Mr. Wilson, what could I possibly use my smartphone for”, I hear you ask once again. Geez, awfully talkative today, ain’t ya? Well, if you’re here, that means you’re probably interested in casino games, in some capacity. Surprise, surprise – you can play those on your phone! My good friend Harvey Henderson has actually created a website specifically for online casinos you can play on your phone, so you should definitely check it out if you want more information. I’m not going to repeat what he has already said, but I will tell you about a couple of casino games that I believe work really well on a mobile device. First off is, of course, slots – modern slots are already mostly digital anyway, so their presence on a mobile device definitely fits like a glove to a hand. Now, I have to admit, there’s a whole lot of slots – literally hundreds in the UK market alone, spread across various sites. And, sadly, Sturgeon’s Law applies here as well – most of them, in my opinion, aren’t all that great. But the 10% that are good are really good. You can see some recommendations on Harvey’s site, but let me tell you, when you find the right slot it feels like you’ve got a tiny slot machine in the palm of your hand, except it actually pays you money when you win!

 

But I can understand if you’re not a fan of slots – I mean, they rely almost entirely on chance, and if you’re someone who values skill or even intuition over pure luck then you probably don’t like them very much. Have no fear, because there’s plenty of other casino games out there! Take, for example, roulette – the perfect blend of luck and skill, using nothing but your foresight and gut instinct in order to make it big! You might be thinking that there’s actually not that much of a variety when it comes to this one – I mean, how many ways are there to play roulette, right? Well, a lot! As it turns out, there’s quite a few roulette games for your smartphone – American, European, French, live, etc etc etc. Each online casino has several different versions of roulette, and they all look and feel a little different, so you should check them out and see what works best for you, personally!

And if you fancy yourself a card counter, well, I’ve got good news for you – blackjack is one of the most popular casino games not just in the real world, but in the virtual space as well! Just like with roulette, every single casino has several versions of blackjack – classic, multihand, switch, single deck and a few more. Overall, there isn’t as much variety as there is with roulette, but then again, the same holds true for real world casinos where there’s typically only one game of blackjack available (I can’t speak for the entire world, but out of all casinos I’ve ever gone to in the UK and Canada I’ve only been in one casino that offered several variations of blackjack – most have the traditional multi-hand version). If I’m to be perfectly honest, I have no idea how card-counting skills would fare in an online environment, as I’m not smart enough to count cards myself, so if there’s any counters among you by all means give me a shout and let me know if it works in online blackjack!

Keep in mind that online casinos don’t have only three games available in them – there’s also baccarat, video poker, even scratch cards, and some of them can be played on mobile, depending on the casino. So stop wasting your smartphone’s potential and go explore the world of online casinos! As long as you gamble with moderation I guarantee you that you’re going to have a good time. Hey, there’s bound to be at least one game you’ll fall in love with, right?

Hey there, guys, girls and others! Stanley Wilson here once again to share with you my vast (and mostly very, very useless) knowledge about all kinds of nerdy things! You know me – I love gambling, comic books, games, roleplaying, all that jazz. But you know what I love even more? When my favourite things cross over! We’re talking superhero games (Go, “Arkham”!), roleplaying as beloved characters (in other words: a slightly more grown-up version of what I did on the playground at age 8) and all kinds of crossovers! Sadly, this happens a lot more rarely than I’d like (I mean, how many videogames based on comic books are actually good? That’s actually a good question, I should make a list about it sometime), but when it does happen it’s always a huge treat. Since gaming and gambling are so similar already, a lot of videogames tend to use certain mechanics from gambling, slots in particular. I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at a few games and see how they incorporate slots into their mechanics!

For the most part, slots are used as a minigames in quite a lot of titles. The open world first person shooter “Borderlands 2” and its sequel/prequel, appropriately titled “The Pre-Sequel”, have slots in several venues which can earn you various prizes, including money, rare Eridium (which is the only thing you can buy upgrades for your inventory with) and even legendary weapons, if you manage to be lucky enough to strike a jackpot. It’s a really cool mechanic that, while completely optional, gives you a chance to test your luck and earn prizes that actually matter, some of which you can’t really find anywhere else. If you’re not into shooters and prefer more family-friendly games, though, you can never go wrong with “Pokemon”. Often dismissed as a mere children’s game, “Pokemon” actually contains a lot of very adult themes, such as fanaticism, mass graveyards, and yes, even casino games. In earlier “Pokemon” titles you’re able to win up to 300 coins while playing slots, which isn’t a gigantic amount (just for reference, a Master Ball usually costs around 600 coins), but you can maximize your odds by stopping the reels at exactly the right time, meaning that, unlike with real life slots, you can actually win almost every time provided that you have a good enough sense of timing. Games set in Las Vegas, or a fictionalized equivalent of it, are also nearly guaranteed to have playable slots in them. I can immediately think of “Fallout: New Vegas” and “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas”, but as a rule of thumb, Sin City always has slots.

Minigames aside, there’s also plenty of games that use slots as a mechanic essential to their gameplay. While free-to-play games aren’t exactly my thing, I hear that a whole lot of them incorporate slot machines to represent their more random elements, such as what rewards you receive when you open a chest. Which actually makes perfect sense – real life slots are pretty much random anyway, so what better way to illustrate the fact to the player than to use something that they know for a fact is random? But really, if we’re talking about slots as major gameplay mechanics, we just have to mention “Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII”. This oddly named game is a prequel to the mind-blowingly popular “Final Fantasy VII” (hence why its subtitle, “Crisis Core”, comes first rather than last, as you’d expect) and is truly one of the best games I’ve ever played. It is an action-RPG where pretty much everything is dependent on the slot – when you perform a special attack (and what that special attack is), when you level up, when you gain new skills, etc. Just like in an action game, you are free to strike against opponents in real time (unlike the turn-based gameplay of “Final Fantasy VII”), and every few strikes cause the rolls to start spinning. And while sometimes the results are predetermined (such as when you level up, which is dependent on a hidden experience bar rather than on luck, to keep leveling up satisfying for gamers who aren’t that enthusiastic about casino), most are not, bringing a really well designed element of chance to an otherwise very skill-based game. If you ever wanted to play a slots game with gameplay that’s more than “pull the lever and see what happens”, then I absolutely recommend “Crisis Core”! Trust me, you won’t be disappointed!