Review: World Championship Poker 2 (PS2)

Poker’s seemingly unstoppable rise in popularity this side of the Atlantic seems to continue unabated. What better way to celebrate this popularity than to release an eighteen-month-old game to tap into this developing market? That’s right, World Championship Poker 2 (or WCP2 as it shall be known) was originally published in the USA in the autumn of 2005.

WCP2 is centred around a career mode, the spoils of which can be taken online. A tutorial mode is provided, which leads you through a sample hand of each of the fourteen variants of poker on offer here. Furthermore, pausing the game allows access to a ranking screen, displaying which hands score the highest in the variant of poker currently being played. This is helpful as each variant has its own idiosyncrasies and thankfully pausing the game can also access a rules guide.

Of course, no career mode would be complete without the option to customise your avatar and WCP2 doesn’t disappoint, although the range of customisable options on offer is distressingly limited. The hairstyles are all ridiculous and the choice of body types is limited to “normal” and the comical “heavy”. That said, the ability to choose a personae (“old timer” was Gamestyle’s favourite) for your character is a nice touch, particularly as this decides which one-liners your character will spout. Whilst customisation is really little more than a few minutes diversion from the important business of playing cards, it wouldn’t take much more effort to do it properly.

As has become de rigueur for all career modes, you begin as an aspiring novice dreaming of being able to compete on the big stage. However, for the time being you play games in the basement of your mother’s house, hoping for your lucky break. When the big break comes, you’re swept into a series of increasingly high stakes poker tournaments before crossing swords with some of the game’s better known exponents such as Howard Lederer and 6 other real-life professionals. Venues and tournaments and events are selected from a world map that even allows access to a pawnshop where furnishings for your house (of which bigger and better can inevitably be purchased as your career progresses) can be purchased when on a roll and sold back should lady luck not be smiling on you. Indeed, if she’s positively frowning on you, the pawnshop will provide a loan to tide you over.

Of course, the important part of any poker game is the quality of the person you’re playing against. It’s impossible for a game to accurately recreate all the tics and foibles that make the real-life version of poker such an attraction, but WCP2 certainly has a brave stab at it. The trash talking done by your opponents creates a sense of atmosphere and competition. Each CPU controlled character has their own personality traits and you’ll see some of the same faces appearing at different tournaments meaning you have the opportunity to study and learn your opponent’s habits before mercilessly taking them to the cleaners. After prolonged play, cracks do show and you’ll find it becoming easier to spot which style of play each new character will use although NPC characters can still have the odd fit of impetuousness.

One irritating aspect of WCP2 is the “bluff and tell” mini-game. If you try to play a particularly cheeky hand, a mini-game is launched whereby two rotating circular markers have to be lined up. Pull it off and your avatar will do a mean poker face, or bluff about the quality of the hand. Fail (which you’ll do more often than not) and your avatar will perform a “tell”, a gesture that gives away your intentions and will see your opponents fold quicker than the world origami champion. The markers to be aligned are small and fast moving, and frequently change direction just as the timer expires, making it very difficult to perform anything but a tell. The mini-game also seems at odds with the realistic nature of WCP2’s mechanics.

WCP2 certainly looks like an eighteen month old release. The presentation, graphics and sound are all perfunctory and workmanlike in their nature. Any poker game that leaves you wishing it was easier to see your own cards is definitely doing something wrong. That said, the bargain basement presentation does mean that it’s easy to navigate you way around WCP2. Loading times are unacceptably long, particularly given the game isn’t asking the PS2 to do anything particularly strenuous. Although a handy poker hint or two accompanies each loading screen, the hints soon repeat themselves and don’t really hide the real problem. There’s also no mid-tournament save which is incredibly frustrating during the later stages of the game where events can take hours rather than minutes to complete.

In addition to the career mode, WCP2 also offers a quick game mode with plenty of customisable options and an online mode, which supports the Eye-Toy and headset, should you own either. However, once again European online take-up is lacking to say the least and games are few and far between.

So, was WCP2 worth the wait? Probably, if you’re already a poker fan. The simulation on offer here is certainly done to a decent standard, with clever AI programming. However, even with the tutorials WCP2 is still quite dense if you come to it as a poker virgin (there’s no glossary of terms, for example) and for that reason, along with the drab, sometimes thoughtless presentation and subsequent lack of glitz and glamour, WCP2 can be thought of as little more than above average.

Rating: 6 / 10

Words by Andy Lucas