Remember when poker on television was the biggest sensation out there.
No?
Well I remember.
I watched it all the time because that's all the family would watch on TV, and sometimes I watched it on my own because there's something oddly entertaining about a game of poker done in that particular style***.
Anyways they made a series of computer games to cash in on the craze of video poker.
And I found one in a Bargain Bin two years after the game had came out.
I remember playing it and being horrible at it at the time.
Just because I enjoy poker doesn't mean I was very good at it.
And it's kind of annoying to play against the computer that always knows your move.
That's not to say the game was cheating.
I don't think it was for the most part*.
But no matter how interesting the game got, you're still playing against an algorithm. So some of the entertainment of socializing is gone.
They do makeup for it by having weird comments coming out of there stream potato people.
Some of them are just completely off-the-wall nutty.
One of them as an incredibly bad Western American attempt at a bad French accent. And there's one old hillbilly man who constantly claimed that he was going to '''buy a new wife''' with his winnings. Which I assume is just a fancy way of saying prostitutes
The game captivated me at the time because of its surprisingly fun art style. Everything was done in that hazy downstairs Bar (think Cheers) Noir style that was coming back into popularity in the early 2000s.
And it has a surprisingly decent soundtrack. All very smooth Jazz ballads.
The customer characterization was surprisingly good too.
Some of your clothing options reminded me of the old Tony Hawk games where you could put on Military helmets or wear a paper bag on your head.
All kinds of zany weird stuff.
And it add a certain amount of flair to the game.
I hate the mini games that exist to though.
There are these horrible little 'follow the tracer with your analog stick' game that would pop up whenever you had a really good hand or really bad hand and they just got annoying overtime. Not because I was good or bad at the Mini-Game, simply because it just took up more time.
I want to get into the actual poker game and just get on with the event.
Which was ultimately interrupted when my game started studdreing out of control.
Now that's not the game's fault.
That would be the emulation that just can't handle it for some reason. They can play a game like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 just fine, but this poker game! Forget about it it's not going to work.**
I ended up switching over to a PSP version of the game instead which is more stable though not as graphically entertaining and some of the voices are cut out.
Though that might be a godsend in the long run as they get really repetitive if you play these long tournaments.
One of which takes over a hundred players to actually get through and you're ultimately not meant to win the first time you'll ever play it because you're not skilled enough.
You get skill points by playing the game and you can use them to ''cheat'' later on. And you want to do that because you want to start feeling like you're an actual Pro and not just some random guy playing poker.
Me I utilize the quick save quick load technique that comes along with emulators. Because I couldn't be bothered play this game properly.
At least not when I switched over to the other console and have to get myself back up to where I was. Then I have no problems using the exploit.
As it is the game itself is fine there's like a thousand poker games though. So it really doesn't matter which one you choose. I'm sure there's 50 that are better than this.
*Sometimes the cards wouldn't calculate up properly and your opponent could win with a lesser hand. It's bull crap but I had a hand where I won with the Lesser hand once, so I guess it evens out. It's a small bug but it does pop up and say one in every 1,000 hands.
**I do own legal copies of my poker game. But unfortunately in order to play it i'd have to re hook up the PlayStation 2 and then try to find the game very deep within the closet. And I'm afraid to dig in there.
For there are things buried in the closet that should never be un-earthed.
*** So I just watched a video of poker online for a couple of minutes. An event only happened a few years ago.
And my Lord what the heck was so fun about this?
It really is just a bunch of people sitting there playing with chips and bedding hands every minute or so. And then you've got the commentators trying their darndest to make this sound even remotely entertaining.
I got to give credit to some of them, they can at least hold your interest to a small degree. But I'm still baffled at this effort took off.
Then again I'm baffled most organized sporting events take off on TV. It doesn't matter if it's mundane like darts or organized like football.
Football on the radio is oddly entertaining if you've got the right commentator.
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