World Championship Poker (Xbox)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.9 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Alex Navarro
• Reviewed on: 12/03/2004
• Updated on: 05/17/2006
• Released on: 11/30/2004
• Originally published on GameSpot: World Championship Poker (Xbox) Review

It's official: Poker has taken over the world. Thanks to the popularization of the World Series of Poker tournament on ESPN, movies like Rounders, and the rise of poker celebrities like Annie Duke, Phil Helmuth, Daniel Negreanu, and Johnny Chan, you can't throw a brick nowadays without hitting someone who claims to be some manner of poker enthusiast. With this sudden onset of poker fever, it's only natural that some console game publisher would step forward to take advantage of the craze. In this case, that publisher is Crave Entertainment, with the Coresoft-developed World Championship Poker for the Xbox. Why should you bother picking up a $20 poker game for your Xbox, when you can easily play any number of poker games online for free? Actually, you probably shouldn't. That is, unless you have Xbox Live.

When you first boot up the game, you'll be given a chance to create a player to represent you at each table you join. You can simply skip this process and use the default model, but you'd be doing yourself a disservice by doing so, since there's actually a wealth of options for character customization here. Apart from choosing from multiple types of clothing, you can actually make a number of changes to your character's face, shaping it in ways that rival the character-customization options in most any other game currently on the market. The one problem is that, despite the wealth of options, the models themselves simply aren't that great to look at. But it is nice to be able to create the poker player you think best represents you.

Though World Championship Poker features both offline and online capabilities, the offline play is mostly irrelevant. There are 12 different variations of the game of poker in WCP, including an assortment of stud, draw, and hold 'em games, not the least of which is the immensely popular Texas hold 'em--the game of choice for pro poker players everywhere. When playing offline, you can opt to simply play a quick game, or participate in any number of different tournaments. These tournaments all have specific buy-ins, and depending on the ranking, they can net you a hefty sum of cash. The trouble is that, apart from unlocking some new tournaments as you go, there never feels like there's much point to any of it. There's no real career aspect to the game, so you're basically just adding meaningless cash to your stack.

The other problem with the offline play is that it's predictable and boring. On the default difficulty, the AI is just plain bad, checking away bets while sitting on a nut straight, or getting into raising and reraising battles while holding only a garbage pair. Once you up the difficulty, the betting becomes more realistic, but it's still totally predictable. Your computer opponents hardly ever seem to have any tricks up their sleeves, so usually, when they bet, they bet according to what they have, and never try to bluff you. And even then, they still seem to slow-play too many hands, betting only on the river or checking away after a big draw, even if they have a great hand.

Continue reading

Where to buy

World Championship Poker (Xbox): $3.99 - $9.99

store	price	in stock?	rating
	$9.99	Yes
Inetvideo.com	$3.99	No

see prices from 2 stores

Compare prices for World Championship Poker

	Amazon.com	$9.99
	Inetvideo.com	$3.99

Recent user reviews

• Average user rating: 0 stars Not yet available
  Back to product review
• My rating: 0 stars Write review

• Showing 2 of 2 user reviews

• 0.5 stars

  "Dont buy this game"

  by FlashGuy on May 31, 2006

• 1.5 stars

  "This is the most boring poker game I've ever played"

  on September 11, 2004

• See all 2 user reviews Write review