Dick Van Dyke makes an appearance
When you decide to bluff yourself, a mini-game pops up. This involves keeping a marker in one of the three sections of a circle while it spins. This determines whether your bluff is successful or not or whether you’ll show a tell sign to other opponents. The circle moves fast to begin with, but if you upgrade your skills effectively bluffing becomes easier. In theory it doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but in practice the feature just slows the game down even further.The audio in the game really got on my nerves. I’d like to point out to that English people do not speak like Dick Van Dyke in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and say the likes of ‘Jolly God Hand’. That, quite frankly, is taking the mickey. There are a number of other stereotypes, such as a cowboy, and they’re all as equally bad as each other.
The online mode in World Championship Poker 2 could be the game’s only saviour. We’re yet to try it out as the game has yet to be released in the UK, but it does feature webcam support and will give us the chance to play real people without the gimmick of the bluff and tell system in the single player mode.
Click for larger imagePoker can be an exhilarating experience and an addictive, engaging battle of wits and skill, but World Championship Poker 2 isn’t. The poker matches are far too slow, presentation is lazy, NPC’s behaviour is erratic at the best of times and there appears to be no real skill involved in winning any tournament. World Poker Championship 2 may appeal to those who haven’t got a PC and can’t download free poker software, but anyone else should really give it a wide berth.
Pros
Loads of poker games
Online play with webcam support
Cons
Erratic AI
Last-gen presentation
Dreadful Audio
Slow-paced gameplay
Download poker software onto your PC, it’s more fun and costs you nothing.
