Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Let me open by saying that had I bought the console version of the game instead of the PC version, I probably would not have been nearly as disappointed and would not be writing this review. I have not yet played the console version, but I have watched some video and screen shots in addition to researching just about every review written for this title from various gaming sites. Though both the console and PC versions are published by Activision Value (key word being Value), upon further review, it look likes the development of the PC version of the game was done by an entirely different company (Toybox Games) than the console version (Left Field Productions), and other than the recorded voice for the commentary and the concept of the game itself, the two versions should be considered and reviewed as completely different games. The only game reviewer out there that I found to have done a review on both the PS2 version and the PC version at this time is GameSpot, in which the same reviewer gave the PS2 version a 6.8 and the PC version a 4.7, which I thought was rather generous, but still rates a poor on their scale. He probably wasn't able to take as much time to evaluate the game as I have.
(...)
In the PC version, there are a whopping total of 2 camera angles. The overhead camera for viewing the flop-turn-river in which all you see is the felt, cards, static face shots of the players in the hand, and the dealers hand movement revealing the community cards. And then there is the other camera angle, which you will be spending most of your time viewing as you always sit in seat 9 at the table. To give you a better idea of how rudimentary this game is, after installation I found the bulk of the game is comprised of bitmaps and wav files. Every graphic in the game can be found in one of the bitmap files, of which there are a total of 3826 that eat up a bit over a gigabyte of space. This may seem like quite a few images, but keep in mind, this represents every object in the game, whether it is backgrounds, chips, menus, loading screen, cards, player faces for display on in between hand screens, tutorial help screens, and character animations. For instance, there are 468 separate bmp files alone representing face up cards from each position on the table (9 seats * 52 cards), half of these particular images being no bigger than a few pixels in height. The player animations are no more complex than pre-rendered bitmaps which comprise all movement each character can possibly make in the game. While sprite animation was great back in the 1980s, it surprises me that this game developer couldn't be a bit more resourceful today. Each player in the game will always sit at the same seat location every game, every tournament. So no matter how many times you're at the table with Chris Ferguson, he will always be at seat 1. Though 9 players have recognizable names from the WSOP and somewhat resemble their appearance, you won't be able to distinguish their game play from any other player at the table. There are five possible players that will sit at each seat, giving a total of 40 players that will ever be encountered in this game. There are only 5 women players in this game, and they will always be located at seat 4. The players that sit in a particular seat also seem to have similar appearance and animation as their other 4 counterparts.
As far as the audio goes, there are a total of 455 wav files comprising the music, clapping, ambient sound, effects, and commentary. Again, this is rather shallow once you break it down. For instance there are 7 wav files for each card that may be called out from the announcer, comprising 91 of your 455 possible sounds. As a side note, I don't even recall hearing individual cards are called out by the announcer, so it's possible these 91 wav files are not in use. While the variety of voice infliction is nice, there simply isn't enough variety in dialog and therefore it becomes very repetitive. Often times the commentary is not even appropriate for the situation. I don't know how many times I've raised the amount of the blind and bluffed everyone out of a pot only to hear Lon say I clearly had the best hand at the table when holding a 7-2 off suit, and he makes it seem like I just took down a monster pot, when it was just the blinds. And Lon will quite often say something to the effect of 'he makes a cautious raise' during a limit game where there is no choice in how much or little you raise. There is no voice from anyone other than Lon and the other announcer and there is only one player introduction wav, which happens to be for Chris Ferguson.
The AI seems to generally play conservative, and can easily be bluffed out of the hand, especially pre-flop without a pocket pair or ace-king, but tends to stay in to the end when presented with a flush or straight draw after the flop until the river when you'll know by betting whether or not it has anything. What is quite annoying is there is no change in the way your opponents play as the number of players at the final table diminishes. In heads up action, your opponent will still fold on almost anything in his hand pre-flop, which causes dozens of hands to go by sometimes before there is any action. Unless you're lucky enough to also have something that's playable then, it's probably best to fold, which means that the game play experience in heads-up is not really there. The AI is quite predictable taking most of the fun and challenge out of the game.
As annoying as the graphics, sound, and AI are over time, had there been some thought and research put into the actual experience of playing in a WSOP tournament, this game still could have been somewhat enjoyable. Unfortunately, at least as far as the PC version of this game goes, there are some serious issues here also. While you're playing in a tournament, there are statistics on the tournament that show you overall chip position and players left. These stats are rather meaningless as it all activity outside your current table is really nonexistent and therefore, you will only see changes in the statistics when something happens in your game. For example, you will never see the number of players left in the tournament drop until a player from your table has been eliminated, and then it drops by a set number proportionate to the total number of players that entered the tournament. Therefore, you may see it go from 710 players remaining to 658 after one hand and no matter how many players entered the tournament, there is a predictable number of players that need to be eliminated from your table, which I believe is around 15, to reach the final table. It doesn't matter if it is a tournament of 200 players or the main event. What makes this really bad is as you approach getting to the final table, the number of chips brought in from players joining your table will be significantly higher. Because the number of total players who played at your table up until the final would be about 24 and the rest of the field's chips are suddenly given to the few remaining players that join your final table, the final table will inevitably consist of a few players that have very huge chip stacks in comparison to the players you have been playing with, one of which will likely have up to ten plus times the chips the previous chip leader had at your table. Because of this design flaw alone, any hope of feeling like you're getting the WSOP experience is all but taken away. In addition to this, because the final table happens so prematurely, the blinds are usually much less than what they need to be at the final table, given the total amount of chips. In career mode the blinds are raised at 12 minute intervals and it can take hours from the start of a tournament for them to approach worthwhile levels at a final table. This is especially painful in a limit game. Even though there is no customization built into the game regarding career mode tournaments, there is the ability to manipulate one of the plain text files that hold the current tournament data. While you're messing around, go ahead and give yourself a few extra WSOP bracelets... no one will care.
Lastly, there is at least one stability issue I am aware of. I believe there is a problem with an animation of one of the female characters named Nathalie that causes the game to crash. While it is possible to resume the tournament after a crash, this player will still be sitting at your table and I find myself replacing this character with another, again by manipulating the game data stored in the text files.
Having a programming background myself, the poor quality of this game all around greatly disappointed me. Even though this is value priced software, I would strongly discourage anyone from buying the PC version. Not having played it yet, I cannot recommend the console versions at this time, but from my perspective it would be the clear choice if you are looking to buy this title. Given that the console versions were developed by a different company and based on the reviews, there is little doubt that in my mind they are anywhere near as bad as this version. However, more poker titles are on the way, one which is coming out soon that looks promising. It may be best to muck this title and bet that future poker games are not such a bad flop.
Click Here to see more reviews about: World Series of Poker
0 comments:
Post a Comment