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The rarely updated blog of Joel Dixon
Friday, September 28, 2007
XBLA: Texas Hold'em
# Posted by Joel Dixon at 28/09/2007 09:29:00Updated by Joel Dixon at 28/01/2008 14:51:21
My latest game review has been a month in the making because of a stupid developer's decision on the definition of a "hand type" - but more on that later.
Attempting to cash in on the huge popularity of poker, and specifically the Texas Hold'em variety, Tik Games have created this Xbox Live Arcade game.
An extremely bare bones, basic game with very little in terms of frills or features, Texas Hold'em is probably best described as a good game. When compared with other poker games on the 360 (such as World Championship Poker or World Series of Poker), this game will only match up when comparing price.
Gameplay is very basic - you have all of the essential elements of poker, but nothing more. After playing a little bit of real online poker before, I quickly missed features such as hand histories or an option to make your decision before your turn. Although gameplay is very basic, it's solid in the implementation - and also boasts connectivity with the Xbox Live Vision camera, which is pretty neat.
The single player game is next to useless, providing a place for complete novices to learn the game, as well as a few achievement points. Computer AI is very lame, and it doesn't take long to work out a system that will beat them every time.
The multi player game mode is where most serious players of this game will find their time - and the aforementioned camera as well as headset support really make the game a little extra fun. Online games exacerbates the issues with gameplay, as well a lot of waiting for people to act - but at least the opponents are not predictable. They will, occasionally, be complete knob-jockeys - but I've come to expect that.
Most of the achievements were simple to get and well thought out (like one for winning a pot with high-card, or winning an All-In bet), and the first 190 achievement points came pretty quickly. The last 10 points took me over a month to earn.
The last achievement is to be dealt one of each hand type of poker. That would have been fine, as in my 3,000 or so hands it took to complete the first 11 achievements, I had had at least one of each poker hand types: high card, pair, two pair, trips, straight, flush, full house, quads and a straight flush. The problem was, the developer stupidly decided that a royal flush is a separate hand type to a straight flush.
Now a royal flush is simply an Ace high straight flush, and not a separate type of hand. By adding this requirement for the achievement - the developer had significantly upped the difficulty. Apparently the odds of a straight flush are 1 in 72,000 - not too bad. The odds of a royal flush are 1 in 649,739 (much worse). And there's also the possibility that you may never receive a royal flush.
I'm a bit of a completion-ist - I spent a full day playing Prince of Persia to get the last achievement, and I spent a good week of solidly playing Kameo to get all of the A rankings. I ended up finding something heavy to place on my controller's A button - and let it play hands for me as I slept. 40,000 hands later - I had my royal flush and those last 10 points. Probably not worth the time, electricity, or fact that my Xbox will now die a hundred hours earlier than it would have - but once I completed 20,000 I couldn't turn back!
Overall Texas Hold'em is not a great game, it's barely above average, but it's OK if you just want a basic poker game. All considered - I don't think it's worth the money. 2.5 out of 5.
# Posted in the Gaming section and tagged as: Xbox 360
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Comments
| Eryc-Ads Posts: 13 |
Give me Parlour games over any of this new stuff..including the music trax # Posted - 03/10/2007 12:21:49 |
 joeldixon   Posts: 170 |
Oh man - now I've got that music in my head! Time to dust off the old emulator!  Stay tuned - I'm hoping to do a blog on the ol' master system of some kind soon. That reminds me - did you see this one - It's all about the pixels? # Posted - 03/10/2007 13:11:09 |
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