I don’t mind admitting that some of my favourite games on Xbox Live Arcade are the card based ones, Uno and Texas Hold Em All both get plenty of play on my Xbox 360, but can the latest card based game, Lost Cities do enough to grab some of the play time away from the other two?

Lost Cities is a turn based card game which kind of feels like a cross between Uno and Solitaire. The game includes five different colours of cards which each represent a different expedition through the Himalayas, the Brazilian rain forest, the desert sands, ancient volcanoes and the ocean. There are two different types of card for each set, first up is the Investment card which must be placed before any other and then multiplies the value of any cards placed on it. The other cards are called the Expedition cards and these are placed in order of face value (running from 1-10).

The aim of the game is to defeat your opponent by having a higher score than them at the end of the round, however there is a twist. When you place a card to begin an expedition 20 points are automatically deducted for that particular expedition, however you will also lose 20 points for each Investment card you place on the board, meaning that if you place an Investment card and you don’t get many Expedition cards down in face value for the corresponding colour you will lose quite a few points. On a similar note once you place an expedition card the value of these will start to eat into the debt you have accumulated, so if you manage to get a good run of cards down in face value you will soon find yourself with a positive score.

Generally you should be able to tell by your hand at the beginning whether you should place a Investment card or not, it is wise not to go crazy with these because your score will suffer, however if used correctly they can be the key to winning the game. Although there is an element of strategy needed in this game, as with most card based games a lot of the time luck is the key, as let’s face it, no amount of skill is going to help you if you are dealt four or five awful hands in a row.

The main problem this game has is that it only really has one gameplay mode and within that three difficulty levels, it would have been nice to see a bit more variation in the games, however this problem doesn’t stop it from being addictive and as an added bonus it even supports the Xbox Live Vision Camera, just so that you can see the frustration on your face as you lose to the computer once more.

As with most Xbox Live Arcade games, Lost Cities also includes an online mode, although this suffers from the same problem as the single player game in that there is only really one mode of play, however if you can find someone online to play against, it does have that just one more play feel to it.

The presentation of Lost Cities is of a pretty decent standard, the backgrounds are colourful and the sounds blend in nicely, although I wouldn’t say that anything really sticks out as spectacular, though you wouldn’t really want it to in a card game anyway.

So is Lost Cities worth investing 800 Microsoft Points in? Well I would say it depends if you like this style of game, if you love your card/puzzle games then I would say go for it because Lost Cities offers a easy to play and highly addictive game, and while you may not play it constantly it is a game which you will go back to now and again for just one more go.