Customer Reviews

World Championship Poker 2 with Howard Lederer

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In my opinion, this is the best. The play is good, the graphics are good, gameplay is accurate and fair, everything still holds up today. I looked into this a ways back. Checked online game magazine reviews for the highest rated, best playability and programing of poker games on the original Xbox system. This one was one of the highest. It still holds up today. This is not a casino collection (it doesn't seem like the original Xbox ever got a decent casino collection game going, they all are pretty bad). This game, World Championship Poker 2 with Howard Lederer, consists of just poker games. All sorts of poker games. It sticks with that and does it very well. For the novice poker player and for the serious minded poker person.

This game features a lot of small tournaments which are quite fun. The action, though, is really in the large tournaments you occasionally get to play in career mode with 200 people. They can be quite long if you want to finish high but are very intense, and interestingly, many of the tournaments seem to each have their own feel, as if you were really playing with different groups of people each time. By this I mean you encounter different strategies of raising and calling in the no limit tournaments, and the cpu players are willing to take varying levels of risk. (this review refers to the offline playing modes)

The fact that I paid a bargain price for this game no doubt influences my positive attitude, but I have had a lot of fun playing this game. I like the fact that it has both career mode and free play. A more experienced player might not be impressed, but I like the AI and the different player types you end up sharing the table with. What I especially like about this game is that the pace and feel of the game is very realistic and comfortable to me. It's low key, and I never feel annoyed, like I'm waiting too long, or lost, because the play is flying by so fast. I find that my game improves as I sit back and watch the players who stay in the hand, trying to guess what they have based on their playing style. I find that I'm able to use this information to win pots from the same characters later.

The "mini game" bluffing feature is a bit annoying, but I've used my "skill points" to make it easier. One improvement would be more information about the current odds and other statistics. I used to play a DOS game in the mid 90's branded with Amarillo Slim's name that had a great feature for this: at any point I could pause the game and study the percentages and statistics to learn along the way.

If you can find one at a good price and you want to improve your game, I recommend it. If you're a heavyweight and looking for the ultimate poker game, I don't know if that exists yet.

I am not going to be as hard on this game as Mondo Vendo was. Certainly there is a great deal of room for improvement, but the AI is miles better than the first one. While I do agree that the game selection system is irritating and the characters leave much to be desired, the poker play of this game is very enjoyable. Winning money in this game is certainly as difficult as it is in real life and the game forces you to become skilled at all types of poker (which is not a problem from my point of view because I am one of the few players that believe that there is more to poker than just no-limit Hold'em).

Apparently, players of this game on other systems (Playstation 2 and PSP) have had problems with it crashing mid-play. I have not experienced any of this on the X-Box version and I have been playing this since the first day it was released.

In short, given the choice between this one and World Poker Tour, I would have to say that the World Poker Tour is just slightly better, but both are worth owning for different reasons. WPT gives a more complete Hold'em experience, where as this one gives you a more complete poker experience. Of course, I have high hopes that Stacked is going to blow both of these choices out of the water. I'll keep you posted if it does.

This really isn't much (if at all) better than the 1st one.

For one, often the percentages of player's chances to win don't add up to 100 percent. I notice sometimes that it happens when I notice a good chance that they will tie and have to split the pot. I don't think this is how it works on tv (not sure)? I am assuming this is an error in the game.

Also the career mode has buildings with games in a map. It is about 5 screens wide and you have to scroll and follow arrows to see what games are offered and then decide. It is time consuming for no reason. They could easily have put this on one screen.

They also often only have bad illogical choices of games. For example maybe you can play five card draw for $200 at 'your pad' or you can play Howard Lederer one on one for $50,000. You start with $1000.00 so if you are playing legitimately you may have a long time before you get a good choice of games. And still then not much of a choice.

I created one character and played legitimately and lost all my money about 10 times before I was able to be good enough to build his bank roll to about $4,600.00. I can't imagine how long it would take before I get to play a game with a pro.

I also created a player I cheated with by only saving if I won and reloading if I lost. Even with this, I had to play a ton of $200 buy-in games because it was that or big money games that I couldn't afford. When I finally built $57,000 and had a week with a Howard Lederer game offered, I beat him with little trouble. I doubt the character had more logic programmed in than other characters. He really didn't have much special characteristics or comments. It just looked like an undetailed Howard Lederer.

I really think this game was rushed for whatever reason (holidays???? coming of xBox 360???). Not just the implementation but the design seems rushed. Liked they green lighted the project and then everything was given a unexpected due date.

I like the game and play it a lot just because I enjoy increasing my poker skills. I wish the career mode had more choices of games to play each week. I wish to practice Crazy Pineapple, 7 card stud, and Texas Holdem more and really don't want to spend time building my skill in Razz, 5 card draw and hi/lo versions of the games.

I also wish the pros had more to them. They are hardly glorified over the normal no name opponents you play.

If you just want to practice poker, it'll do. Don't expect much beyond that.