After many months of waiting, multiple conflicting stories from Microsoft, and a lot of spin control (48 hours for free), Texas Hold 'em is finally here.
After a short 20-something meg download the game arrived on my console like many XBLA games before it. When I fired it up for the 1st time, I was quickly greeted with some passive background music and the Texas Hold 'em menu.
Texas Hold 'em supports both single player (against the CPU) and multiplayer (over XBox Live) options, and within that has options for standard games, no-limit games, and a bunch of other Hold 'em variants. The selection seems robust enough to keep the game interesting, although if you're bored you can always change the look of your table and the carpeting on the floor until your heart's content.
In order to avoid the pitfalls usually associated with "for fun" poker games, Texas Hold 'em uses a persistant bankroll system so that there is incentive not to go nuts on every hand. Every player starts with $2000 in their bankroll and it's affected by each and every hand you play. If you end up losing your whole bankroll, then you need to work it back up with some of the lower stakes no buy-in games. The fact that it takes some effort to rebuild your blown roll should (hopefully) keep people playing as if it was real money.
In order to get out this quick early review, I was only able to play a bit of the single player game. It plays like any other Hold 'em game, and the graphics are decent. My only concern is that the screen seems very cluttered with information on each player, etc, and even on my 65" HDTV I found the text to be fairly small. I'm not sure how well this game will play on a smaller low-def TV. The controls were easy to get down, and within 2 hands I felt very comfortable with them.
Overall, I was happy with the game, although I feel like the screen could be better managed to show more of the cards, chips and table, and less of the player info, but the gameplay was fun and true. For $0.00 this game is a steal, and well worth the price. :) I'm not sure what this will go for in 48 hours, but it's probably worth 800 gamerpoints.
I definitely plan on logging some serious hours on this tonight when I get home from work. :)
- DSmooth
Texas Hold 'em supports both single player (against the CPU) and multiplayer (over XBox Live) options, and within that has options for standard games, no-limit games, and a bunch of other Hold 'em variants. The selection seems robust enough to keep the game interesting, although if you're bored you can always change the look of your table and the carpeting on the floor until your heart's content.
In order to avoid the pitfalls usually associated with "for fun" poker games, Texas Hold 'em uses a persistant bankroll system so that there is incentive not to go nuts on every hand. Every player starts with $2000 in their bankroll and it's affected by each and every hand you play. If you end up losing your whole bankroll, then you need to work it back up with some of the lower stakes no buy-in games. The fact that it takes some effort to rebuild your blown roll should (hopefully) keep people playing as if it was real money.
In order to get out this quick early review, I was only able to play a bit of the single player game. It plays like any other Hold 'em game, and the graphics are decent. My only concern is that the screen seems very cluttered with information on each player, etc, and even on my 65" HDTV I found the text to be fairly small. I'm not sure how well this game will play on a smaller low-def TV. The controls were easy to get down, and within 2 hands I felt very comfortable with them.
Overall, I was happy with the game, although I feel like the screen could be better managed to show more of the cards, chips and table, and less of the player info, but the gameplay was fun and true. For $0.00 this game is a steal, and well worth the price. :) I'm not sure what this will go for in 48 hours, but it's probably worth 800 gamerpoints.
I definitely plan on logging some serious hours on this tonight when I get home from work. :)
- DSmooth
