Reviewed by Tiffany Craig
My poker experience consists of Kenny Rogers on the radio and a few social games with friends. I’d like to say I’ve learned and bettered my game from those brief events, but I still lose my shirt and don’t know why Johnny Depp had a card stuck to his head during the intro credits for 21 Jump Street. Given that background and stubborn inability to improve, I’m probably not the target market for a game like World Championship Poker 2. For example, two of its main draws, the game personification of world champion Howard Lederer and calls by promoter Max Savage demanded consultation on Wikipedia. To the aficionado though, they’re household names as ubiquitous as Paris Hilton. But then game sales aren’t reliant on poker addicts alone. There are bound to be more of me, wallowing in gambling ignorance, than the pros browsing the local shelves at the game store. The question is, is World Championship Poker 2 inviting enough to bring us in?
Your first task, before actually playing, is using limited options to create your customized avatar. Face types to clothing are stingy and tend to end up looking quite masculine. Ladies wanting a set of dainty features need not apply. There are some nice touches that kind of make up for these limitations; the cowboy hat and Elvis glasses give it all a bit of a Vegas edge. And there are enough options to make sure you get a vague concept of what you actually look like (or want to.) Once you have the physical down, you add a bit of personality. This choice has little impact on play, that’s down to you, but still dictates how he or she responds verbally at the table.
After tweaking, dressing and piercing you take your avatar to the table in one of three modes. There is no tutorial for simply learning how to play. You must know the rules before entering any of the games. The official website has a good run down of the styles of poker included and once you understand, the tips on loading screens will become more useful. If you can’t remember what was on the site, you can look them up at the start menu. Once you’ve attained that knowledge, the first mode is solo play, where you can play one of 14 kinds of poker in a single game. The second is career mode, or the game itself, where you’re a budding champion who wants to enter the international tournament circuit. These tournaments play different games, with Texas Hold ‘Em featuring prominently. Criteria for winning varies from tournament to tournament, some only require you to place in the top two and others want you to win a certain amount of money. The third is online, for PS2 owners with Eye Toy cameras and network adapters, where you can play against real people and break the repetition of career mode.
World Championship Poker 2 really excels in quality of the AI, something enormously important in a game where personal interaction can make or break a hand. The other players will try and psych you out, bet big on bad hands, be generally pessimistic about their abilities and try and bluff you. They vary their playing style enough to make predicting moves difficult, though not impossible to learn. You also have the option to try and bluffing to get your own back with the included mini-game. When the game thinks you’re betting big on a winning hand, or bluffing with a potentially losing one, the Bluff/Tell mini game wheel pops up. It looks easy; you have to make the wheel stop in a place to get the right behavior. In practice it’s very difficult usually results in a Tell. Kind of like actually keeping a straight face.
There’s little variation in the tournament locations and the players you’re up against. Almost all around the table abide by the same archetypes you choose when creating your avatar. The “lucky” persona, for example, will frequently shout about how she trusts mystical forces to give her a good hand. These little interruptions can become repetitive and annoying, like the music, with tells sometimes hard to distinguish due to the primitive graphics. But they aren’t so broken as to put potential players off. After all, the point of the game is to play poker, where it exceeds expectations, and not necessarily enjoy fabulous scenery.
As I said at the start, I’m not the queen of UK poker. I can barely work out winning pairs. The addition of Howard Lederer as an opponent is an extra bit of enticement for legitimate poker players but will fly over the heads of amateurs. And due to my ignorance, I had a bit of apprehension about the learning curve, both for poker and WCP itself. And this game isn’t for the greenest player. There’s no mode for learning poker, which could have gone a long way to add value. But if you know a Flush from a Straight, or that two kings beat two aces, then you can play. It’s priced well at 19.99 with casual games, making it quite accessible to people who might not pick up this kind of title. Overall, World Championship Poker 2 is solid and does exactly what it professes. As long as someone has a vague interest in poker, amateurs and enthusiasts alike can waste many an hour in it honing their skills.
Special thanks to Nicole Lestrange and Oxygen Interactive for providing a copy of this title.