World Series of Poker

"My one-night review: Worth the $30"

So, World Series of Poker. I managed to snag a copy at the local Wal-Mart on August 31st, sat down to play it, and decided hey, I'll fire off a quick review.

Intro: You have a few different play modes. Quickplay just jumps you right into a single table game. Online I haven't tried yet (no home Internet due to Hurricane Katrina), but I will soon hopefully. The Career mode is the main mode. You're given a $10,000 bankroll and 10 years to win as many WSOP bracelets as you can. Each year, there's 30+ events for you to enter in: Texas Hold Em, Omaha, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo, and Razz Poker (lowest hand wins). You DO have the ability to save your career in mid-hand, which comes in very handy for those of us who need to be able to pause and leave instantly.

Graphics: The graphics are just what the developer name is: Value. The menus are not very pretty, but they are more than serviceable. Animations of the poker players are few. The detail of the players is far from great, but passable enough. Create-A-Player gives you a few different options to make your player -- 4 or 5 skin types, a few different shirt/pant/suit designs, facial hair, etc. Pretty standard stuff.

Sound: The sounds are again -- passable. The players have a few stock voices (I've heard 5 or 6 different ones so far) but they're already starting to repeat. It's been very fond of a male voice that -- let's just say this voice would fit right in on Will and Grace. You will become VERY sick of the ultra-fruity "I caaaAAAaaLLLlllLLlllll" soundbyte.

Gameplay: A lot better than I expected. Controls are very simple: The control stick chooses your command (Up = All-in, Left = Check/Call, Down = Fold, Right = Raise) and the A button confirms it. Using the stick in this fashion lets you speed through the games very fast. At all times you have the option of using the A button to "Fast Forward" which makes the games go even faster. The camera will either do an ESPN-style over-the-shoulder view of a particular player, or give you a ceiling view of all the players and what they're showing. On the ESPN-view, you can't see the other cards on the table, only your own.

The collector's chips seem to be a neat little addition. Everytime you meet one of their conditions, you get a chip. There's 100 in all. So far I've gotten 11 of them, with my best ones being my Full House chip and my Two Takedowns In A Single Hand chip. From what I understand, you will be able to use these chips to buy your way into special online tournaments. Of course, the "Gotta Catch Em All" aspect kicks in with this, which is never a bad thing to have in a game.

Finally, the poker itself. Even without the fast forwarding, the games move along very quickly, but not too quickly to keep track of. The Poker AI (Disclaimer: This is my first poker game to play since Vegas Stakes on the Super NES) seems to be very good so far. On every table you'll find one or two ultra-aggressive players. Sometimes the players always bid high in the beginning and you'll find you can catch them with their pants down quite often. Others always seem to have the cards. At any time during the tournaments, you'll get scrolling updates across the bottom informing you of the chip leaders, and you can pause the game to get table stats on your current table as well as a Top 10 Leader list. For your career mode it also keeps up with your stats.

All in all, I can see myself playing this poker game for a long time to come. I haven't played it enough to find any bugs, and I haven't tried the online play. But the single player career mode so far has made for a very enjoyable poker game, and the different types -- while not numerous -- do offer a bit of variety into the game from NLHE. My one-night rating: 8/10.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/05