Friday, August 14, 2009
Glu.World.Series.of.Poker.v1.5.0.N-GAGE.SymbianOS9.1.cr@cked
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Glu.World.Series.of.Poker.v1.5.0.N-GAGE.SymbianOS9.1.cr@cked-BiNPDA
Gameplay
Ngage tournament screenshotWSOP: Pro Challenge is a one-on-one Texas Hold 'Em Poker simulator. It has three introductory matches which you can complete to unlock a three round WSOP tournament, and winning that unlocks a three round N-Gage tournament (despite the name it's all offline, there's no multiplayer). You can also play against any of the computer players in one-off matches, which may help you get to know each one's mannerisms.
The controls are very simple, you use the direction pad to choose an option and press its button to select it. The game can be played in any screen orientation, and works fine both horizontally and vertically. This should be suitable for any phone model with any button layout.
If you're unsure about Poker, or if you haven't played the Texas Hold 'Em variety which is so popular nowadays, it's worth learning the basics before playing this game. WSOPC's in-game help is probably not going to be clear enough for new players to learn from scratch, and you would be better off consulting one of the many "Teach Yourself Poker" sites on the web. Incidentally, the Texas Hold 'Em rules are the same ones used on American poker television series such as The World Poker Tour and World Series Of Poker (indeed, WSOP is the licence used by this game). If you can follow episodes of the WPT or WSOP series, then you will probably be able to play this game.
You can only play games against one opponent at a time, which is perhaps understandable on a phone game as three or more players may take too long, but it would have been nice to have the option of more players. You can leave a game at any point, but you will have to start it from scratch next time. If you leave a game in a tournament, you can re-enter the tournament in the round where you left. This is very convenient, but also a tempting way of cheating: as soon as you're losing you can leave a game, then come back to it and the money is level again. Tables can be set to no-limit, pot-limit or limit.
Ngage tournament opponent thinkingAll of the opponents are real life professional poker players: Johnny Chan, Annie Duke, Shannon Elizabeth, Chris Ferguson, Mike Mizrachi and Scotty Nguyen. They have apparently been photographed for WSOPC, and provide various facial expressions during games which may or may not give you a clue about their situation. The animation is rather crude but you can definitely see the expressions, though there don't seem to be very many of them.
In terms of gameplay, WSOPC's biggest flaw is probably the lack of any kind of challenge. This reviewer (who is not an experienced player at all) managed to get to the semi-finals of the final N-Gage tournament after just a few hours of playing, and none of the matches seemed more difficult than previous ones. There didn't seem to be any learning curve at all, if you could defeat opponents early on you could defeat them much later in the game too. After you've gone through all the levels and tournaments, there's very little incentive to continue except to blindly accumulate more and more pretend money.
There are some specific achievement-based tasks you can aim for such as winning with one hand (which you can do fairly easily with an "all in"), but this gets a bit dull and feels like working through a checklist rather than playing a game.
As if the game wasn't easy enough, there's an "odds" meter which tells you roughly how good your cards are in the current situation. This meter can't be switched off, and it's very difficult not to look at it.
One of the novelties of WSOPC is the "tilt" meter, which fills up as your opponent suffers a defeat of some kind. When it is full, it starts blinking and the opponent is supposed to start making stupid mistakes, but this reviewer didn't notice any difference. The same applies to the "tells", or expressions on your opponent's face, which are supposed to be the key to winning a game of poker. In WSOPC they aren't really required to win at all, you can completely ignore them.
Shannon ElizabethAnnie Duke
Scotty NguyenMike Mizrachi
Some of your opponents. Yes, they do look like heads stuck on other people's bodies, and it gets even worse when they're animated.
Graphics & Sound
WSOPC features the kind of graphics you'd see on a Java game, and indeed this is apparently a slightly upgraded port of a Java game.
On the positive side, all of the graphics are perfectly functional: you can see all the cards, all the necessary information is visible, and nothing gets in the way of the gameplay. A particularly nice touch is the way the game waits to reveal the final card, which adds some much-needed tension.
Another good graphical feature is the use of signature chips, which are effectively trophies that you receive for certain achievements. These all have their own unique graphics, and it's more fun to collect these than to just rack up numerical N-Gage points. Nokia might want to add something like this to their own achievements system, which is how the first gen N-Gage's old trophy system used to work.
On the negative side, the animation of the opponents is very disappointing. Perhaps because they'd paid for the rights to these famous players' faces, the developers felt like they had to include photos of them, but the result of this is a rather poor-looking mess. To be fair, you can clearly see all of the players' expressions if you want to look for "tells" so that element of gameplay is preserved, but it's all very crudely done. There's absolutely no style here.
Sound is virtually non-existent, with just the occasional snatch of guitar music and some brief spot effects during certain game events.
Signature Chip win with one handSignature Chip for winning with All In
N-Gage Arena
The only online feature in the game is a single worldwide leaderboard, which the average player is never ever going to appear on. There are no subdivisions or categories, and the player isn't even told their ranking unless they're in the top twenty.
Overall
At ten euros WSOPC is not the cheapest game on the N-Gage platform. For the same money or less you could buy any other N-Gage title including the excellent Hooked On:COTD. However, WSOPC is the only card game on the platform so far, and that may tempt some people to try it.
Its main plus point is that it is easy to get started and the in-game interface is pretty streamlined. If you want poker on N-Gage, this may be good enough for you.
The game's negative points are a lack of difficulty even for beginners like this reviewer, a lack of options in terms of rules and player numbers, and a lack of things to do once you've played through all the set challenges. On top of all that, there's no multiplayer of any kind: no online, no Bluetooth, not even any "pass around" option. As for the online rankings, they're only going to be of interest to the top twenty obsessives who have played this game to death and beyond.
World Series Of Poker: Pro Challenge feels like a cheap licence cash-in game with very little depth, low quality production values, and very few options. Some kind of multiplayer mode might well have saved it, but there isn't one.
download here
Gameplay
Ngage tournament screenshotWSOP: Pro Challenge is a one-on-one Texas Hold 'Em Poker simulator. It has three introductory matches which you can complete to unlock a three round WSOP tournament, and winning that unlocks a three round N-Gage tournament (despite the name it's all offline, there's no multiplayer). You can also play against any of the computer players in one-off matches, which may help you get to know each one's mannerisms.
The controls are very simple, you use the direction pad to choose an option and press its button to select it. The game can be played in any screen orientation, and works fine both horizontally and vertically. This should be suitable for any phone model with any button layout.
If you're unsure about Poker, or if you haven't played the Texas Hold 'Em variety which is so popular nowadays, it's worth learning the basics before playing this game. WSOPC's in-game help is probably not going to be clear enough for new players to learn from scratch, and you would be better off consulting one of the many "Teach Yourself Poker" sites on the web. Incidentally, the Texas Hold 'Em rules are the same ones used on American poker television series such as The World Poker Tour and World Series Of Poker (indeed, WSOP is the licence used by this game). If you can follow episodes of the WPT or WSOP series, then you will probably be able to play this game.
You can only play games against one opponent at a time, which is perhaps understandable on a phone game as three or more players may take too long, but it would have been nice to have the option of more players. You can leave a game at any point, but you will have to start it from scratch next time. If you leave a game in a tournament, you can re-enter the tournament in the round where you left. This is very convenient, but also a tempting way of cheating: as soon as you're losing you can leave a game, then come back to it and the money is level again. Tables can be set to no-limit, pot-limit or limit.
Ngage tournament opponent thinkingAll of the opponents are real life professional poker players: Johnny Chan, Annie Duke, Shannon Elizabeth, Chris Ferguson, Mike Mizrachi and Scotty Nguyen. They have apparently been photographed for WSOPC, and provide various facial expressions during games which may or may not give you a clue about their situation. The animation is rather crude but you can definitely see the expressions, though there don't seem to be very many of them.
In terms of gameplay, WSOPC's biggest flaw is probably the lack of any kind of challenge. This reviewer (who is not an experienced player at all) managed to get to the semi-finals of the final N-Gage tournament after just a few hours of playing, and none of the matches seemed more difficult than previous ones. There didn't seem to be any learning curve at all, if you could defeat opponents early on you could defeat them much later in the game too. After you've gone through all the levels and tournaments, there's very little incentive to continue except to blindly accumulate more and more pretend money.
There are some specific achievement-based tasks you can aim for such as winning with one hand (which you can do fairly easily with an "all in"), but this gets a bit dull and feels like working through a checklist rather than playing a game.
As if the game wasn't easy enough, there's an "odds" meter which tells you roughly how good your cards are in the current situation. This meter can't be switched off, and it's very difficult not to look at it.
One of the novelties of WSOPC is the "tilt" meter, which fills up as your opponent suffers a defeat of some kind. When it is full, it starts blinking and the opponent is supposed to start making stupid mistakes, but this reviewer didn't notice any difference. The same applies to the "tells", or expressions on your opponent's face, which are supposed to be the key to winning a game of poker. In WSOPC they aren't really required to win at all, you can completely ignore them.
Shannon ElizabethAnnie Duke
Scotty NguyenMike Mizrachi
Some of your opponents. Yes, they do look like heads stuck on other people's bodies, and it gets even worse when they're animated.
Graphics & Sound
WSOPC features the kind of graphics you'd see on a Java game, and indeed this is apparently a slightly upgraded port of a Java game.
On the positive side, all of the graphics are perfectly functional: you can see all the cards, all the necessary information is visible, and nothing gets in the way of the gameplay. A particularly nice touch is the way the game waits to reveal the final card, which adds some much-needed tension.
Another good graphical feature is the use of signature chips, which are effectively trophies that you receive for certain achievements. These all have their own unique graphics, and it's more fun to collect these than to just rack up numerical N-Gage points. Nokia might want to add something like this to their own achievements system, which is how the first gen N-Gage's old trophy system used to work.
On the negative side, the animation of the opponents is very disappointing. Perhaps because they'd paid for the rights to these famous players' faces, the developers felt like they had to include photos of them, but the result of this is a rather poor-looking mess. To be fair, you can clearly see all of the players' expressions if you want to look for "tells" so that element of gameplay is preserved, but it's all very crudely done. There's absolutely no style here.
Sound is virtually non-existent, with just the occasional snatch of guitar music and some brief spot effects during certain game events.
Signature Chip win with one handSignature Chip for winning with All In
N-Gage Arena
The only online feature in the game is a single worldwide leaderboard, which the average player is never ever going to appear on. There are no subdivisions or categories, and the player isn't even told their ranking unless they're in the top twenty.
Overall
At ten euros WSOPC is not the cheapest game on the N-Gage platform. For the same money or less you could buy any other N-Gage title including the excellent Hooked On:COTD. However, WSOPC is the only card game on the platform so far, and that may tempt some people to try it.
Its main plus point is that it is easy to get started and the in-game interface is pretty streamlined. If you want poker on N-Gage, this may be good enough for you.
The game's negative points are a lack of difficulty even for beginners like this reviewer, a lack of options in terms of rules and player numbers, and a lack of things to do once you've played through all the set challenges. On top of all that, there's no multiplayer of any kind: no online, no Bluetooth, not even any "pass around" option. As for the online rankings, they're only going to be of interest to the top twenty obsessives who have played this game to death and beyond.
World Series Of Poker: Pro Challenge feels like a cheap licence cash-in game with very little depth, low quality production values, and very few options. Some kind of multiplayer mode might well have saved it, but there isn't one.
download here
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N-Gage 2.0 Games
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