Most poker games live and die by their multiplayer components, since poker is inherently a game best played with live people. All three versions of the game include online multiplayer for up to nine players. Hosts can set up sit-and-go tables, as well as multitable tournaments, and you can play any of the available games, including hold 'em, Omaha, and several other basic poker variants. As tends to be the case with online poker, the game is slow-moving. Offline you can use speed settings to blaze through hands, but no such option presents itself with live players, so you may find yourself in a number of long, drawn-out games. But if the slowness doesn't bother you, then you'll find the online play pretty good and basically lag-free. You can also use the vision cam on the 360 version to display a small image of yourself onscreen each time the hand comes around to you. The EyeToy provides similar functionality in the PS2 version.
The Xbox 360 version also has a good number of achievements--35 in all. Few are outlandish, with most simply tasking you with winning the various in-game events and collecting some of the special collectible chips that pop up when you do things like get on a good winning streak or reach a certain number of final tables.
What drags Tournament of Champions down the most is its presentation. It's tough to make an exciting-looking game of poker, considering that players at a poker table don't do much beyond shifting around in their chairs and occasionally screaming wildly when they lose or win a big hand. The basic in-game graphics aren't terrible, though they're fairly bland, and the game lacks the dynamic presentation of one of the TV poker broadcasts. You'll also notice some ugly clipping issues with character models from time to time, especially if you use a character with a custom head in the 360 version. The upper and lower sections of these characters' necks don't line up properly, so you'll often see the upper half of the neck clip through clothing in a pretty hideous way whenever your character turns his or her head. The 360 version looks better than the PS2 and PSP games, but mostly because of better skin textures and crowd graphics. Viewing the 360 game on an HDTV does not provide an impressive visual experience compared with what else is available for the 360.
The audio presentation is considerably worse than the visuals. Though the developers did at least go to the trouble of getting both Lon McEarchen and Norman Chad this year, they didn't give them anything to do. They have maybe a couple of dozen lines apiece, and both repeat often. Norman doesn't have many of his trademark jokes available, and Lon's play-by-play is badly stitched together, with lots of instances of horrible shifts in voice tone and volume coming at random. The pro player dialogue is at least delivered pretty well. Otherwise, a lot of background casino noise and generic, slide-guitar-heavy music occupies the menu screens.
We're at a juncture now with poker games, where providing a decent online mode and a lengthy career mode isn't quite enough to sell an entire package. With games starting to step it up in the AI category, it's time for all poker games to get smarter and not rely on the same robotic AI routines that don't emulate how people really play. And as far as presentation goes, it's not enough to just trot out a bunch of pro players, some licensed commentators, and camera support and call it a day. The PS2 and PSP already have a gaggle of poker games available that offer roughly the same features that Tournament of Champions does. On the 360, your only option at the moment may be the single-player-bereft and bare-bones Texas Hold 'Em for Live Arcade, but at least that game costs four times less than this one. You won't necessarily go wrong by checking out Tournament of Champions, but there are smarter and deeper games available elsewhere.
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