Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

There once was a time when it would be unthinkable that Poker would be considered a spectator sport.  Watching card games isn’t exactly high on people’s minds of things to do for fun.  However, since programs like the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker started, that perception has changed.  It has also caused a resurgence of popularity for the card game and the most common variant of Poker, Texas Hold ‘em.

For a long time card games on computers and consoles have been common.  You didn’t need much for graphics, as you could put a number and a suit graphic on a white background and it was still effective.  All you needed was a little was a randomization program and a little AI and you could play Blackjack, Poker, or several other card games.  With the capabilities of today’s PCs and consoles, all that power seems to go to waste with something basic.  That’s why you get games like World Series of Poker 2008 (WSoP) which try to simulate the poker experience.

When watching WSoP, you have a table and players sitting around that table.  However, the venues are very different.  If you are going to a training session, you will be in an area where there are gray bricks surrounding you, making it feel like you are in someone’s basement.  The Tournaments are held in swank Las Vegas casinos with bright neon lights surrounding you everywhere.  Sometimes they will even have a short video describing the venue for you.

When at the table you observe the other players at the table.  The clothes and people have a surprising amount of texture, but the players still look low polygon.  They make expressions at the table, but the number of animations is pretty small, and you’ll notice the people at your table doing the same thing multiple times.  While this might be considered a personality trait of one of the characters, different characters will do the same animations.  While we aren’t expecting Unreal Engine 3 graphics, some of the characters just plain look bad.

There are table cams that are used for looking at your cards.  This does help to make the game feel more like a broadcast.  They also have real sponsors too for the “next card” cam and the table cam.

The background noise in WSoP is what you’d expect from playing Poker.  There is ambient chatter in the background, which poker chips clicking against each other throughout the match.  This does bring some of the ambience of playing Poker to the game.  When being dealt cards, a weird sound effect is used that makes you feel more like you are playing a video game and not a real hand of Poker.

A decent amount of voice work went into WSoP.  With a large cast, several of the best players contributed voice samples, at least as far as I could tell.  You even get a color commentator from two announcers up in that mysterious booth in the upper deck.  Unfortunately, there isn’t much variety at all for any of the people in the game.  You’ll hear the same commentary over and over again in the same tournament.  The same phrases are used by the same players repeatedly.  It’s worse than John Madden when he did commentary for the Madden series.

The controls are pretty simple since this is a poker game.  No need to worry about high-twitch reflexes for this one!  You can use either the analog stick or the D-pad to move the cursor and make your selection.  Hitting X selects the action, and Triangle lets you view your hole cards.  Those are the basic controls, and you really don’t need much more than that.

If you like to have a wide variety of Poker games, then WSoP definitely delivers with several variables of Poker.  While you are most likely going to be playing Texas Hold ‘em most of the time, several other variants of Poker are available.  If you don’t know how to play a specific game, then don’t worry, as there is a tutorial to help you learn each game and its intricacies.

The tutorial stars Phil Hellmuth as your Poker instructor.  He appears in a small video box on your Activision cell phone.  He gives you the basics of the game and then has you head over to the table.  During the first hand he’ll whisper sweet nothings into your ear, as well as tips for winning the hand and what the proper strategy is in each situation.  You can almost think of him as the Jiminy Cricket of Poker.

The tutorial handles games with limits and without limits, and variant styles of play for the variants of Poker available to you.  Unfortunately, you can’t just go to any tutorial that you want to and learn the game.  You have to go through the tutorials in sequence and complete objectives involving playing the game to get through it.  If you are already familiar with Texas Hold ‘em and want to go through the tutorials on some of the less familiar variants of Poker, you still have to play through the tutorials to get through the one you want.  Unlocking tutorials doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Once you are secure in your Poker playing skills, you are ready to go out on the circuit and try to win some money.  If you don’t, you can kiss your hard earned cash goodbye.  Three different skill levels are available.  The skill level determines the amount of money you have to start and which tournaments will be available to you.  The easier the skill level, the less events you can participate in and the more money you start out with.

In the tournaments the computer handles most of the dirty work, like shuffling cards, dealing, and anteing the pot.  Since you have the amount of money up on the screen, you don’t have to worry about counting chips.  While this would have been a neat feature for those who like to play for real, it is also beneficial to newbies who are just getting into the world of Tournament Poker.

In the tournament you sit at a table and place your wagers.  As the game goes along players get eliminated.  As players get eliminated, other players bring their cash to your table and the process starts again.  It’s important to stay in the game and not bet too much where you find yourself playing hands you don’t want to so that you can try to gain ground against the others at the table.  The biggest problem with the tournaments is that you can’t save in the middle of the tournament.  Once you start, you can’t stop unless you completely quit the game and want to retry the tournament.  This can mean a couple of hours playing this game, and if you don’t realize that you could be stuck there for a while.  While I understand that the fact that you can’t save may be attributed to the fact that they don’t want players cheating, it still sucks if you expect to be there for a short time and end up there for three hours trying to win a tournament.  It doesn’t help that as you are playing it seems like the game stalls after making your selection to grab the correct animation.  It really detracts from the game.

This is not to say that there aren’t options to try to help speed up the game.  There are animations for everyone at the table, and the game sometimes waits a little while to simulate them thinking.  You can also watch the dealer as he deals cards to everyone and also produces the Flop, the Turn, and the River.  Thankfully you can hit X to skip these animations, but you need to do it repeatedly.  You almost feel like you are going to wear out the X button because of how much you skip.

While the game plays a good game of Poker, there were several times when I felt cheated.  Once I had a time when there was a 95% chance I would win the hand with only one card to flip over.  When that card was flipped, it was the perfect card for the AI player.  While I’m sure this happens occasionally, it happened way too often to be considered realistic.

With three difficulty levels, you are going to be challenged no matter what your skill level is.  It will also take you a while to get through all of the events because of how long it will take you to get through each of the tournaments.  These can be long to get though, especially since you can’t save in the middle of them, as I mentioned before.

If you aren’t up for continuing your career, you do have a few options available to you.  You can play a quickplay game of Texas Hold ‘Em, or you can select the pros you want to play against.  You can also set up a custom game where you set the game type, players, number of players, starting cash, limit type, limit, ante, and blinds.  You can even set the venue where the game will be held.  If you want a little more than a custom game, a custom tournament is available if you like.  If you want a real quick game, a speed game has high blinds and antes that increase quickly.  You are also given a time limit in which to make a decision.  If you don’t feel like playing those Poker games, you can play Blackjack or Video Poker.  These two diversions feel pretty basic and the menu background gets annoying very quickly.

You can play online as well.  You can play a quickmatch, find a game depending on your settings, host a game yourself, view your friends list, look at the leaderboards, and look at your Rivals List.

World Series of Poker 2008 has a lot going for it, if you enjoy playing Poker.  If you don’t, then you probably don’t have any interest in the game.  If you want to learn how to play correctly being dipping your toes into betting Poker games, this would be an excellent tool to learn, and a way to not lose money through playing with a bunch of buddies for real money.  Still, you will need to remember that it is a time investment because of how long the tournaments can go.

Gaming Trend Score

70

1. Graphics: 64
2. Audio: 60
3. Controls: 85
4. Gameplay: 72
5. Value/Replay: 66
6. OVERALL:70