World Championship Poker 2: Featuring Howard Lederer

"Gambling In Slow Motion"

(My review score represents my purchase of the game at a reduced 19.99 price tag, which made it more favorable.)

I'm a big fan of poker, but I've never felt any real need to purchase one of the 8,000 poker simulations that have been released in the last few years. You can play poker on-line against real human players using any number of Web sites, after all. But with a long two-way bus ride ahead of me and nothing particularly compelling on the shelves, I decided to grab the budget-priced World Championship Poker 2 to keep me occupied. (Or at least distracted enough to avoid having to watch Legally Blonde 2 on the in-bus movie system.) All told, the game provides a very respectable game of poker with over a dozen game types, but the slow pace and repetitive voice samples will wear you down after a while. Still, it's probably the best PSP poker title to date, and at twenty bucks, the price is right.

The game's main strength is the career mode, where you start out as a small-time poker fan trying to work your way up to the big time. The character customization is pretty thin, which is a little disappointing. Worse yet, though, is the tiny selection of personality types. Personality types seem to determine which voice samples the players use, and between the small number of personalities AND voice samples, you'll be hearing the same lame table talk over and over and over. You'll end up at tables of eight players where three of them have the exact same voice and share the same three lines of dialogue. Bleh. Thankfully, it's not an audio-intensive game, so turning down the volume solves these problems quickly.

Anyhow, your plucky poker hero will start out playing small money games in his basement, but eventually move up to playing high-stakes side games and even major tournaments. You'll come across games using a wide variety of rules and poker variants, so if you're only used to playing no-limit Texas hold 'em, you may need to do some studying in the game's tutorial mode before trying out stuff like Crazy Pineapple and (my favorite) Razz. I was pleasantly surprised at the robust selection of poker variants, and it stands as one of the game's main strengths.

One other 'strength' may actually be a curse, though. The game provides a pretty realistic simulation of poker, which sounds good in practice. However, for those of you who have only seen poker on television (where they edit everything down to the major hands), let it be known: poker is a SLOW game. This is especially true in 'limit' poker, where raises are set at relatively small amounts. A head-to-head battle between two players with big chip stacks can take forever, since the small raises/antes are easily shrugged off, and most players won't commit without having a strong hand. Kisu is absolutely murderous in this regard. It seemed like every other game ended up with me and him going head-to-head, with him folding away any hand that wasn't a monster. Thankfully, you can leave a game at any time once you've achieved a certain chip goal, and move on to a livelier game. Hey, some players might like the realistic grind of proper poker, but it may not be entirely appropriate for a handheld game. Considering my 20 minutes of train time a day, it might take me a month to finish a single table of limit Omaha. Mercifully, you can tap at the X button to make the A.I. players move faster.

Adding to the game's snail-like pace is occasional slowdown, and as expected, the long load times we've come to know and semi-tolerate from the PSP. You'll boot up the game, which takes a while, then it'll load the game properly, which takes a while, then you'll choose a game to sit at, which takes forever to load... and you get the idea. Guys - portable gaming needs to be fast and engaging. If you need to cut graphical corners, so be it.

Still, the game wins you over, with some nice touches. The ability to earn trinkets and money in career mode adds some subtle RPG flavor to the mix, and you can go to a pawn shop to sell/buy new stuff for your place. As you move up in the money standings, you'll get nicer homes to live in as well. There are also some mini-games and quizzes included, which help test your general poker knowledge. These aren't going to occupy you for very long, but it's nice that they tossed them in.

The game looks quite good, as poker goes. The character models are refined and well-animated, and the professionals in the game (including Lederer and his sister, Annie Duke) are drawn spot-on. The developers absolutely nailed the rank ambience of the bachelor basement... it made me laugh every time I played a game down there. Good stuff.

Things go downhill in the audio portion, though. The music is bland, cheesy lounge stuff... kind of funny, but mostly irritating after 15 minutes or so. The voice samples are even worse, and aren't funny the first time, let alone the 259th time. This is a case where something like ambient or gentle classical music would've been a better choice.

Still, if you want a rock-solid poker simulation to play on the go, this is probably the best choice to date. (Then again, most of the competition is thrown-together junk, so it's not a ringing endorsement.) With solid multiplayer support and a hearty variety of poker types, you'll have a lot of fun with the game. As long as you're patient, that is.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/05/06