World Championship Poker: Featuring Howard Lederer - All In

"Howard sure does deal some good cards"

It seems poker games are here to stay. Ever since the Texas Hold ‘em craze hit around three or four years ago, poker games have been regularly broadcasted on sports channels, the main theme for an ESPN television series (called Tilt, which I highly recommend you track down on DVD), and there have been yearly video game installments from several publishers for a few years now. Though it seems there are now just two main publishers competing for the bracelet this year. Activision has their officially branded World Series of Poker game, and Crave with their third poker title, World Championship Poker: All In – Featuring Howard Lederer. Let's just refer to it as All In from now on.

All In features six pro poker players from around the globe, but I only recognize two of them. Howard Lederer since he headlined the last game, and Erin Ness because she wrote in Maxim magazine how she did amazingly well with her wild card spot in the World Series of Poker a couple years ago. The manual does a good job of giving background information for all six poker pros, which is great for people like me who don't watch poker on television that often and have no idea who most of these faces are.

I played a lot of last year's game, World Championship Poker 2, and I am very fond of how Crave handles the game of poker. It doesn't take itself too seriously, as the menus and poker venues have a very welcoming atmosphere to novices of the game. The menus are very colorful, and feature caricatures of the poker pros in a unique Pink Panther-esque animation style. There are big time Vegas and Europe casinos to play in, but there are also a bunch of other attractive settings like a Broiler Room, a rundown Asian storage room, and broken down half-furnished apartments.

There are 19 different variants of poker in All In. Besides the uber-popular Texas Hold ‘em, there are other classics featured like 5 Card Draw, Omaha and 5 Card Stud. Crave made a very smart move and threw in short interactive tutorials that help you learn how to play all the other games within minutes. The tutorials do a sufficient enough job teaching the ins and outs of all these styles. A lot of these extra styles of poker were hit and miss for me, but the ones I came out enjoying the most were Razz and Lowball.

Just like last year's game, All In's main way to play is its Career mode. It operates mostly the same, but with a few different changes. You start it off by creating a character from an editor that has a decent variety of options to trick out your own poker shark with, from there you move into the aforementioned rundown apartment. There are several events taking place around the globe, and you can pick one each week. Addressing one of my qualms from last year, this time at least one of the events available each week is a Texas Hold ‘em match so you won't feel forced to play any of the other poker styles that aren't your cup of tea.

Another new modification to the Career mode is if you don't want to participate in any of the events available each week, you can host your own match at your own pad. Once you accumulate enough winnings and victories, you can upgrade your stats for skills like hand strength and bluffs and tells and also use it to purchase new furnishings for the eventual better housing you'll earn yourself. A complaint I have with the Career mode is when playing in long tournaments that could last several hours, you can only save midway through it just once, the game explains on a loading screen that this is done to prevent cheating. I can see the developer's good intentions, but I just don't know if everyone can set aside just two multiple hour sessions to get through some of those very long lasting tournaments.

As far as other modes of play, you can set up a quick exhibition round of poker of any of the 19 versions. There is also a new scenario mode that pits you in tricky situations, such as being the last person remaining in a tournament against Howard Lederer himself who has you on the verge of elimination. Finally, there is a nice online component of All In. Bring your created player online in a quick round of play or set up multi table tournaments. There also some nice communication options for Friends Lists, and support for USB headsets and keyboards. The only downer is even at ideal playing times, I experienced only minimal amounts of opponents online.

Graphics and audio-wise, All In offers the most it can for its $19.99 asking price. The character models are serviceable and have a nice variety of animations, but they look downright embarrassing compared to the next-gen visuals from World Series of Poker on the Xbox 360. There are lots of voices that fit a wide array of poker personalities, and even though some of them sound very amusing for all the wrong reasons, they actually add a nice bit of flair to the game and for some reason I never grow tired of hearing them.

For just $19.99, World Championship Poker: All In offers a very in-depth poker game. Whether you just want something to play Texas Hold ‘em on your PS2 for, or something with the depth and customization of a sports sim, All In is your best bet.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/09/06