Dead Celebrity Poker Review

This game really piles on the novelties, but in the end, neither bantering phantoms nor online play can distract from the fact that the poker engine itself isn't so great.

At this point, it's really difficult for a new Texas hold 'em mobile game to stand out from the crowd. The market has reached the point of complete saturation--we've seen poker games endorsed by a range of celebrities and professionals, a World Poker Tour game, an Old West poker game where you can cheat, and even poker-type games where you can win prizes. Dead Celebrity Poker, from indie mobile house MyoTwitch, is unique in several respects--there aren't too many indie games in general showing up on Verizon's deck these days, let alone Texas hold 'em games that are staffed by dozens of famous corpses and feature online tournaments. This game really piles on the novelties, but in the end, neither bantering phantoms nor online play can distract from the fact that the poker engine itself isn't so great.

Were these guys really this dumb?
Were these guys really this dumb?

Dead Celebrity Poker offers two basic modes of play--a single-player game and a mass online tournament. If you're playing off the network, you're ushered into a graveyard-cum-casino, where the restless spirits of various historical figures while away eternity by perfecting their hold 'em games. You take on four ghouls per table, starting with Old Westerners like Billy the Kid, Wild Bill, and Pancho Villa and progressing through a range of military leaders, geniuses, politicians, and mythical figures. Each of these formerly great men and women has his or her own portrait-style illustration, as well as a near-bottomless reservoir of trash talk; if you take a bad beat, the celebrity who busted you will see you off with a pithy line that's appropriate to his or her historical personage.

This setup is certainly unique, but it's not executed very well from the standpoint of playability. The portraits look good on the LG VX7000, there are some robust chip-tossing noises, and you're able to switch from a top-down to a first-person viewpoint at will--but the table and text windows look rather cheap by comparison, and the screen is constantly being flooded by distracting, wholly unnecessary dialog windows. The overall effect isn't flattering. The poker gameplay itself--betting, checking, and so on--is managed via a simple pop-up menu that lets you choose your action with a directional press.

This system works well, because it lets you repeat simple poker actions like going all-in and folding very quickly--and that's about all you need to do to tear a huge swath through the cream of civilization in Dead Celebrity Poker. It's disappointing to watch Sun Tzu, Rommel, and Bismarck (all tacticians of the highest order) blunder into simple traps or go up against your all-in plays with garbage. You're not playing real poker anyway; the developer seems to have skewed the distribution of hands in the direction of the highly improbable so that you'll be dealt absurd pocket pairs, face cards galore, and other powerful combinations much more frequently than you should. The idea behind this poor decision must have been to make Texas hold 'em more exciting by eliminating most garbage hands, but skillful management of such hands is actually the most important part of the game. The deck does eventually transition to a more realistic model, but even so, you can shred your competition by going all-in on most of your hands and folding the rest; some of the players, like Jack the Ripper, are more aggressive than others, but they'll lose over the long run. Not even the great seer Nostradamus can puzzle out this elementary strategy.

This game's awesome online features are a saving grace.
This game's awesome online features are a saving grace.

The online game fares considerably better, mostly because of the higher caliber of competition and Dead Celebrity Poker's strong connected features. Although you'll need to dispatch the occasional bot, there seems to be a robust community of players online to go up against, and there's very little latency to deal with. Numerical rankings in the game's monthly "money tournament" are available on the game's Web site. Furthermore, you can use the same Web site to customize your avatar. You can use any of the 80-odd celebrities, upload your own image, and enter in trash talk of your choice. No other mobile hold 'em game sports this level of customization.

Those who are looking for a serious hold 'em experience aren't likely to enjoy Dead Celebrity Poker's skewed odds and gimmicky single-player game. However, the connected game is pretty appealing and may be reason enough to download the game if you're more of a casual player and don't mind burning up airtime. In either case, there are several stronger games available for download over this one.

The Good

  • Cool online play
  • Tons of celebs
  • Good character art
  • Decent sound

The Bad

  • Rotten AI
  • Lame poker
  • Irritating usability issues

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