World Poker Tour review

Whether you like it or not, the currently omnipresent card game of poker has been pretty much inescapable within the past two years. From popular online domains to dedicated TV shows, the mainstream has been slapped in the face with something quietly loved-up by experts for years. Regardless if you think poker has passed its popularity peak or just coasting along, it's certainly isn't going anywhere yet. Although it's hard to say the same for its videogame equivalent…

On the Turn of a Card

With the World Poker Tour licence in tow, this Coresoft developed title was never in danger of straying too far from its serious tone. There's a fair amount of gravitas given by its U.S. driven TV programme, which seems quite poe-faced, albeit with a slightly cheesy humour underlining its world of real-life international casinos, hosts/commentators (Shana Hiatt, Mike Sexton and "Hollywood Home Game Hero" Vince Van Patten), and pro players like Antonio Esfandiari and Phil "Unabomber" Laak who are sometimes introduced via some respectable video footage.

If you're not used to the typically bombastic way of play that's popular in the States compared to more understated presentation that's prevalent in Europe, this may seem a little too heavy handed at first, but it lends World Poker Tour a fair amount of pace and punch for our beloved medium in what is obviously not too visual a game.

That said, the range competition is more impressive than you may imagine. The well-known nerve-jangler, Texas hold 'em, is of course the main focus, but there's also the option to play other variations such as five-card draw, seven-card stud, and the wonderfully obscure likes of pineapple and billabong, to name but a few.

A Hand of Monstrous Proportions

The career mode is where the bulk of the game rests, though, and is where World Poker Tour needs to raise its game or goes bust. And the problems tend to show from a relatively early call, despite a fair bit of fun to be had. The opening task is designing your own player, where a surprising amount of options are given to create your personal avatar. Although it has to be said, many of these choices are seemingly geared to making your person look like a total and utter freak of nature. It appears intentional, but when you see what many of the fictional characters you're playing against actually look like, you can't help but wonder if that was the goal after all.

Kindly put, they look terrible. Neither drawn well (bingo wings, anyone?) or animated convincingly, many of the players in World Poker Tour are creepy, misshapen beings that are terribly ugly from an aesthetic point of view; blinking and shuffling cardboard cut-outs at best, scary reanimated sunken-eyed zombies at worst.

They also have a tendency to talk without moving their mouths, which lends some serious credo to the idea that they're actually card-playing telepathic aliens. Even with the best judgment, your hand-made creation is likely to come out looking like a Night of the Living Dead refugee.

If you're wondering why it's such an issue, the reasons soon become clear in-game. You see, their horrific visages undermine the all-important psychology factor when engaging with the AI. Each player has a wide range of expressions that can change throughout, such as looking content, scared, satisfied or horrified. But trying to gauge the AI gamblers is next to impossible sometimes as you can't tell whether they're supposed to be grimacing or smirking, such are their broken phizogs. Whether or not their emotions have an effect on the way they play is an altogether different matter, but what could have been a great element to the title is rendered very hit or miss because the visuals can't truly reflect what the gameplay is aiming to do. It doesn't always affect the game to the point of distraction, but it does severely limit what could have been a fantastic layer of additional and realistic psychology.

Card Sharks Need to Eat Too

So it's mostly left down to the AI. Which thankfully isn't too bad. Knowing your strategy is vitally important once the basic luck of the draw is over, and if you're a decent poker player in real life, chances are that will translate well here. Conversely, good play tends to reveal the faults in the AI, namely boneheaded moves of Homer J. Simpson quality that can happen just as wildly as the decidedly cut-throat moments. It's constantly variable but strangely entertaining and unpredictable, with the nice occasional flash of interaction between players through little snipes and comments between plays.

Sadly, even that is restricted by the sheer amount of repetition that dampens the atmosphere. Commentary and player retorts find themselves looping within the first hour, and then proceed to bore you after that. And while the real-life pro-gamblers are decently voiced, the limited script lets them down. Sooner than later you'll probably tire of them and just be left with the background noise of slot machines and general crowd drone.

All of the above doesn't cripple the career mode by any means. In fact, there's a fair amount of fun to be gained in going through it, with a strong sense of progression helped by the number of unlockable achievements by making certain plays. To that end, it works. Of course, the main problem with this kind of money/stakes-based competition game, a la Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, is that there's no real sense of risk other than pride or the bare desire to play on, when compared to other games.

To a smaller degree this is even true of the online mode, which is… functional. That's to say the interface is clunky and there's clear graphical glitches, but its EyeToy compatibility is a great idea and lends that all important psychological factor that's occasionally absent in the single-player mode. Be warned though; there's a horrific amount of loading throughout, especially when using EyeToy. It's bad enough when you're alone, but in multiplayer it's horrendous.

Calling a Spade: a Spade

Inconsistent. That's what World Poker Tour is. There's a nice batch of ideas and features here, but they lack the polish and thought needed to make the game greater than its parts. This doesn't stop it from becoming one of the better poker titles on the market, but given the competition is so weak in the first place that's not too difficult a feat. The result comes off a little too light-handed to recommend. Its budget pricing saves things somewhat, but even then it's a fairly large outlay considering the alternative is just to get a cheap deck of cards and call a few friends over. It wont have the pretend glitz and glamour of this, but it least your company wont look like escaped mutant freaks. Or at least we hope so, for your sake.

World Poker Tour makes some admirable efforts to sidestep the foibles of its competition but doesn't play as brave a game as the nature of poker demands. Maybe it's time for this addition to the videogame genre stable to start uttering that often resented yet ever-powerful f-word.

That's "fold", by the way.