ARTICLE

World Championship Poker 2: Featuring Howard Lederer

One would think that in describing Crave Entertainment’s newest effort – or, as the case would be, yet-to-be-released effort – a reviewer would require a bit of specialized knowledge in the realm of hooks, cowboys, pairs and trips. This reviewer, however, doesn’t think in reasonable terms, and that’s why World Championship Poker 2 is going to be covered in the thinly-veiled lingo of a total amateur, which you’ll hopefully forgive due to credible overviews of the technical side. Learning the game within a virtual medium is also something I can comment on due to my low poker IQ, and in this time when the exploding popularity of its many varieties is luring in many new players, how well a digitized form teaches the real deal is something that many gamers would do well to know before making the jump from controller to card table.

This offering from the notoriously discount developer makes a predictable impression immediately with its unflattering box art, touting the poorly-photographed professional endorsements of some of poker’s leading men and ladies. Once the game is in play, mind you, it’s a viable, if tightly-budgeted attempt (which you ought to know by the price tag, anyhow). At the title, we get a taste of the minimalist interface – which is all well and good, as poker is ‘in the cards’, so to speak, with visual adornments being purely ancillary. From there, there’s the career mode, which, taking a note from Karaoke Revolution titles, starts you at the bottom of your lowly basement, from where you’ll work your way through the venues to the World Series. As you improve, your character will even ‘level up’ with skill names reminiscent of RPGs – take Keen Eyes, for example, which lets you see through the lies of your pokermates – and be able to deck out (forgive the pun) your ‘pad’ with acquisitions from the Pawn Shop. Failing those sorts of skills (or powers of pure commitment) on your part, there’s also Quick Play, where you can baffle five opponents, if not immediately, then eventually with your $1000 starting cash. Failing any manner of baffling powers, you can at the very least wade through the menus to the ill-categorized Tutorial, which, residing in Extras, just goes to show you how peripheral it will be. Also at the title, we have ourselves the option of making a character in, at the risk of sounding sarcastic, the best customization mode this side of Soul Calibur 3. All joking aside, this is not why we play a poker game; however, there sure are a helluva lot of hats.

Coming back to the tutorial – a vital component for we, the uneducated – WCP2’s tutorial mode is something of a spectator affair that does dangerously little to educate at all. A few screenfuls of text, a hand of poker, and a few minutes later, you’ll be just about as well off as if you scratched your head at the very sparse manual. Yes, the only way to learn is to play, and Quick Play is the best no matter what your flavor of the game. Of those there are a great many, too – Omaha, Texas Hold ‘Em, 5 Card Draw, and Pineapple to name a few – so aspiring card sharks have their work cut out for them before they challenge human players through the wonders of the network adaptor.

One thing that strikes you as odd about the game initially is the lack of a 2 player mode, until you realize the impossibility of sharing a TV screen over exposed hands of poker without some manner of mandatory, game-sanctioned blindfolding. Still, the option is more than made up for by the game’s online capability, which is both Eyetoy and Headset compatible to really round-out the simulation. The video stream of your poker face and the audio feed of your cursing go live worldwide, with owners both of this game and the PSP equivalent calling your bluffs in ways Internet poker can’t match. For those who lack a network adaptor, the computer players are also quite adequately skilled – so much so, in fact, that without a means to adjust difficulty, they can rob you blind before you know a check from a bet. Sitting around that table, jeering at you with cheaply-recorded and gratingly-voiced taunts and guffaws, and motion-captured with altogether too few fine motor skills, you may grow to hate those randomly-generated buffoons and, if you’re the type to get self-conscious about the sound of your games somehow reflecting poorly on your taste, you might just turn off the sound altogether. It’s not really that bad, and neither is the rest… you just have to remind yourself, regularly, like reciting a religious mantra, that this is Crave we’re talking about here. You can choose to have Whacky AI opponents, wearing everything from Tiki masks to Lincoln hats, if that lessens the blow any.

The difficulty issue is an omission worth some head-scratching, but with the rest of the customization and features including betting limits, location, and even lots of stick-swirling and button-mashing mini-games that I just don’t yet understand, the game is a lot deeper than this amateur can grasp, but give it a shot if you want to start a long journey to the top. Just don’t splash the pot, and you’ll be fine.

US Bound?

World Championship Poker 2 was released on 11.08.05 by Crave Entertainment.

+ Pros: A good, fun, clean presentation of a card game favourite. Surprisingly good, mellow casino music, and Career mode and Versus online are fleshed-out for a unique, personal poker experience.

- Cons: Watch your eyes don’t get poker’ed by the jagged edges on those polys… and don’t expect a Tutorial worth watching, if there ever was one worth just watching anyway. If you want to learn, the best way is to play, and turn down those voices to mute. Even if you do, the pain of losing to smarty-pants AI still remains.

Overall: What we have here is pretty typical – accurately-represented poker with the occasional bell and whistle, and the added fun of going online in ways the seriousness of internet poker doesn’t allow (i.e., with play money and A/V).

Written by Katie Montminy.

< Screenshots >