Finally a decent poker game for the PS2. A good teaching tool with some style and substance.
Whether you pick up on the rules or not, at any time, you can pause to check rules and hand rankings of whatever style you're playing, and there's many to choose from. What is H.O.R.S.E.L.? Well, if I play it enough, I'm sure I'll find out. The gameplay is very easy to get into. You're given cards, do with them what you will, call or bet or fold, and showdown with the corresponding buttons onscreen in an unobtrusive way. Like Othello, minutes to learn and a lifetime to master. Create a new character and enter a tourney or go into a quickmatch to catch up on how the game's played. Within minutes, you're ready to lose all your money to a guy in a hockey mask.
The style's really the worst thing about the game, meaning I'm reaching to find what's wrong with it. The casino's aren't varied in such a way that architecture changes - the whole world changes when you select a different casino. Turn wacky characters on and select the lost city casino and you're in for a pretty creepy experience with AI voiced and controlled poker players in masks or horse heads in a hellworld filled with dark ambience, everybody dealing like it's nothing. Truly a jump into the weird, but if you're into that, you'll love messing with the players and surroundings. As serious and full of depth this game is, it's not Stacked MTV metroserious. However, this is all a matter of preferrence so it really doesn't apply to my score.
The graphics aren't going to impress anyone but they ain't AMF Xtreme Bowling, so you can't complain. If you're looking for Squarenix bankrupting masterpiece CG, you're not in the market for a poker game anyway. Nothing too exciting about the ambience, nothing too groundbreaking in the gameplay other than its being very user friendly, and it's really just a poker game. That said, WPC: All In is a good one. Finally, a good poker game for the PS2, am I right? You can pop this baby in for a quick game to get up to speed, to have fun playing for money you're not losing in real life, or to seriously engross yourself and learn about poker in a fun way. At $20, it's not something you'll end up regretting. Well, unless you already have a poker game, I suppose. Then you could just buy some playing cards.