The Showdown: Texas Holdem Games

In this post, we review and compare two poker titles for the PC. One wildly popular title, World Championship Poker 2 featuring Howard Lederer and another title which is more subdued in popularity, TJ Cloutier's World Class Poker.

Let's compare these two games with a scale of 1 to 10 in a few different areas.

• Price
  
• Installation
  
• Graphics
  
• Sound
  
• Content
  
• Replay Value
  
• Multiplayer
  

Price
Both of these titles go for a price of $19.99 at my local Best Buy store. Just a couple bucks more than I wanted to pay for them, I was hoping for about $16 a piece. No biggie. 7 for both games.

Installation
Part of my personal installation routine is to check for patches on the internet as soon as I install games. Most games indeed already have a patch out by the time their boxes hit the shelf, and I expect that.

TJ's game went on VERY smoothly, with an easily locatable patch file from the publisher's website. You had the option to install to your hard drive the movie files, or to leave them on the CD and put the CD in the drive whilst playing. I opted to install everything to my drive. Settings are a snap in the TJ game, and my favorite part about the game is that you can set exactly how often TJ will pop into your game and give you a tip. GG to TJ's game for customizability in that department. 8 for the smoothness and simplicity.

Howard's game went on without a hitch, but needed a restart. There was no patch available from the publisher's website. The game started in 640x480 video mode, and I tried to up the settings. I went straight for the throat, putting it at 1600x1200. The game switched the video mode and I couldn't tell it had. Even at 1600x1200 this game is extremely pixely and gritty, especially in the GUI department.



This game was obviously meant to be played on a TV and not on a monitor at 1600x1200. That'll hurt a bit, but not until the Video portion of the review. 7 since there was no patch, the game didn't autodetect video settings, and it didn't come with any sort of instruction manual.

Look out, TJ's game has pulled ahead slightly.

Graphics

Neither one of these games has spectacular graphics.

TJ's game is not a 3d game. That being said, everything in the game is very polished looking, and there's a slight old west theme to the menus and the tables. The character's faces are not realistic; not that I expect such a thing from my games. Polished, yet not cutting edge.



Player faces do not give any tells, and the personal aspect of the game is completely missing due to the lack of animations or a 3d environment. No 3D is a big hit, but the game is so damned polished that I'm still giving it a 7 in this department.

Howard's game is a 3d game. While on paper that would sound like a plus, it's really not. Howard's GUI is absolute crap on the PC. It's got this terrible retro vibe to it, ugly purple and mauve colors, and in fact gets in the way quite frequently of the camera shots in game. You find yourself trying to look through the incredibly large GUI (taking up almost 1/3 of the screen most of the time) to see what the player behind it is doing.



Player models and faces are not terrible, but very average. Player face customization is limited at best, but at least in Howard's game you have an idea of what you look like. The differing environments in the game do give a nice sense of variety. Player animations are extremely choppy and do not flow well from one gesture to another. Eww. The 3D environment gives Howard's game a slight edge, but the sheer crappiness of the GUI itself, and the lack of refinement to the animations does not help either. I'll still give the edge to Howard's game with an 8 because they did take it to the 3D level.

Sound

TJ's game is obviously geared toward the more mature crowd and player. The western themed music is a nice toucht for the market they are aiming at. In game, you have the option to control player chat, dealer chat, embience, and sfx. Good controls allow you, the user to control exactly what you want to hear. My game is currently set to only give me blind warnings and room embience. Jingling chips sure do sound purdy. While the player phrases do get repeated every so often, the voice acting on the whole is quite polished. 8 for the great control and the polished nature.

Howard's game definitely leaves alot to be desired in that department, including annoying music, poor voice acting, and controls of the sound that aren't as complete as TJ's game. I'd definitely want to play Howard's poker game with some headphones on. 6 because Howard is emphatically against headphones at the real poker table, but can't find the time to put decent sound into his video game.

Content

This is where it starts to get nasty:

TJ's poker game has many game types, and you are in full control of them all. The first thing you do is enter the sign in screen and select your difficulty. Difficulty effects the initial bankroll that your player begins with. This bankroll can be filled at any time, but the difficult setting does make you do a bit of extra work to get into the large tournament. The one thing that this game lacks is a sense of personality while at the poker table.

TJ's game is definitely about the cards rather than the player, and that's ok. He prefers the premium cards and is trying to relay the importance of premium cards to the player. Upon selecting your name and the difficulty, you have the choice to play Omaha, 7 Card Stud, Texas Holem, and 5 Card Draw (this does not include the Main Event and Sattelite game types for Holdem). The game is heavily weighted toward Holdem, and that's why I bought the game, so I'm ok with that. I pretty much play exclusively no limit holdem on TJ's game.

TJ's content is delivered in the tutorial department. TJ took the time to make alot of personal videos for this game, where he is in a sense giving you lessons on how to play your hands. You can set the amount of advice that he gives you in a very scalable manner, you can receive advice in text or video or both, and the delivery of this information is quick and to the point. The tutorials are a 10, and you get a good sense of personality from TJ by watching his tutorials.



TJ even has a list of over 100 additional tips for the game that don't appear during the games. TJ plays a tight game with almost exclusively premium cards, but beware of him when he does hit his hands, cause he will own you, and take all of your chips. TJ's method is one in which you do not play many hands, but the ones that you do are devastating to your competition. You really get a sense when playing TJ's game that you are indeed receiving great info from TJ and would be able to translate this advice to real life situations. TJ's game has been amazing for my live poker game.

The 9 I give TJ's game could have been a 10 if the game felt a bit more personable from everyone.

Howard's game is definitely not meant to teach you how to play poker, or to give you any inside tips. This is essentialy The Sims: Poker Tour for PC. You start a character, give him little stylish glasses and earrings, then you begin your career in some basement poker table with other poorly dressed randomly generated characters. One major grip that I have about this game is that its completely impossible to play career mode and stick to No Limit Holdem exclusively. I'm not interested in a game called "Pineapple," or 5 Card Draw, or Race to the Ace. I want my character to make his millions playing holdem exclusively.



The career map is a bit counter intuitive, and you must complete challenges before you can move on to other games. That may stick you at the same poker table over and over for quite the long time if you're not any good at Omaha or Pineapple. I have yet to see Howard in this game at all. There's a bit more personality in this title simply because the tempo is slower of each hand, and you get a sense that Howard is trying to communicate the various play styles to you through this game. The problem is that you feel like a 5 year old with how obvious hes making these tells and gestures. I'm also constantly reminded by this game that it's a computer game every time I see a poor transition in player animations and sounds. On the whole, Howard's game just goes down in flames when you add the extremely poor content to the growing list of complaints that I have about this game. 6 for just all around poor content.

Replay Value

TJ's game has served as my "golf swing tweaker" for holdem. Every time I find myself loosening up, going out fast, or making poor decisions, I come back for a nice long session of TJ propaganda.



It does me well, he keeps me patient, and the sheer conditioning of hearing TJ's voice with every hand goes a long way toward making me a damn dangerous poker player. I will have TJ's game available on my machine as long as poker is a hobby of mine for these reasons, so replay value in my book is very high for this game. 9.

Howard's game has been uninstalled once already from my machine, but I reinstalled it to give it a fighting chance to show me some real value. There's supposedly an internet multiplayer built in which is great, but the only problem with it is that it's of no good use since there are 0 people online playing this game. Career modes are always good for replay value, so I'm sure this game has some replay value, but it's definitely for much different reasons than the other game. Howard gets an 8 in replay value.

Multiplayer

TJ's game claimed on the box to be multiplayer through (gasp) AOL. This I found to be true, but you were just downloading a different version of a poker game through AOL to play online, so there's no real multiplayer to speak of. That was extremely disappointing. This game is damn near flawless with the exception of a major lack of multiplayer action. 1 out of 10 on that one.

Howard's game does have multiplayer, and it does have the bluff mini game, and you do need to have a good level character to be successful, IF THERE WERE PEOPLE PLAYING ONLINE. There's still nobody playing online. You will be able to hook up via IP address with anyone to play in this game, and it'll be in a 3D environment which is nice. I'll give Howard's game a 4 out of 10 simply because I can hook up via my house LAN to a friends comp and play some poker. It's easier (but not better) than getting out the chips and cards, I guess. 4 out of 10.

BOTTOM LINE

Poker games still aren't that polished, still arent perfect, and I'm sure there will be a grand slam of a title that'll hit the shelves eventually. TJ's game is perfect for the older player. It's also perfect for the younger player that cares about poker techniques and would wish to learn from a professional. Howard's game is just a cookie cutter poker game that was slammed together quickly. It was programmed for a console, and the game runs that way on a PC. I should never see a loading screen on a game with this low of requirements. I don't even want to imagine what the first Lederer game was like if this is a sequel. Good gawd.

All that being said, I prefer TJ Cloutier's World Class Poker to Howard Lederer's World Championship Poker 2 handily. Anyone who has poker as a pastime should own TJ's game, it's my Holdem Bible and it should be yours too.

Total Rating

TJ Cloutier's World Class Poker: 8.5 out of 10
World Championship Poker 2 ft. Howard Lederer: 6.5 out of 10