I’ve never been into poker in a big way but when I heard Texas Hold ‘em was going to be free if downloaded within the first 48 hours I jumped at the opportunity (as did just about everyone on Xbox Live) to add a game to my ever growing library of XBLA titles. Of course my concern is 9 times out of 10 the saying “you get what you pay for” rings true, but could Texas Hold ‘em be an exception to the rule? Let’s see.
Title: Texas Hold ‘em
Genre: Card Game
Platform: XBLA Xbox 360
ESRB: General
Current Retail Pricing: 800 MS points
Release Date: 23/8/2006
To be honest with the game being free and me not really being a fan of poker, my expectations of the game were very low. When I started playing it was in fact the first time I’d ever played the Texas Hold ‘em variant of poker so I didn’t really know what I was doing. Thankfully there’s a “help and options” section which contains detailed rules of the game to figure out what I was meant to be doing. While I was a complete novice to begin with once I learnt the lingo/rules of the game I was able to play like a pro in no time…ok maybe not a pro.
Controlling the game was as simple as you would expect from an Xbox Live Arcade game. Every commands button is clearly displayed on the screen so you’d have to be blind to get lost from an input point of view. To be clear, as long as you know what things like “check” and “open” mean in a poker game you’ll be fine, and if not there’s always that “help and options” section I mentioned earlier to get you up to speed.
The single player aspects of the game only held my attention for a short time, although I did find scenario mode a nice twist I didn’t expect. In this mode you’re placed in different situations, (such as being at the final table of the grand championship) which does add a sense of competition that I felt was lacking for the most part in single player mode. Texas Hold ‘em really shines in its multiplayer game. With up to 8 players competing at once, if nothing else it’s a great way to get together with lots of people on your friends list for a poker night.
Unfortunately despite being a fun game things really start feeling like that “you get what you pay for” situation when it comes to the interface and graphics. I’m going to come right out and say it, the appearance of the game is flat out awful. It suffers from some very odd camera movements and pointless camera tilts that obscure your view of the table/cards. To make matters worse it also has an extremely wasteful use of screen space, covering the bulk of the screen in large player slots which serve little to no purpose for there size. Apparently the game will be getting an update for the vision camera so I can only hope things improve dramatically in that department.
Despite the poor graphics and visual interface the game does deliver a solid poker game which can be a lot of fun, particularly in a multi player environment. If you didn’t managed to download the game in the 48 hour free period and are looking for a good poker experience on the Xbox 360 it may be a smarter move to wait for World Championship Poker which is sure to provide a better all round game experience.
Rating: 6/10