World Series Of Poker Hold'Em Legend: Liquor in the rear
Speaking as someone who’s tried pretty much all of them, World Series Of Poker Hold’Em Legend is the best poker game on the App Store* by roughly the width of the Atlantic. It plays a very decent game of poker, with an excellent career mode and some terrific local and internet multiplayer, but the real standout feature is the speed. You can skip past almost anything with a quick tap of the screen, so if you’ve folded your hand you can be playing the next one inside three seconds, rather than sitting around forever waiting for the CPU players to finish it. (You can, of course, watch the hand play out in full if you want to.)
You can take down an entire tournament this way in about eight minutes, making it the perfect portable poker pal. The only way it could be MORE perfect, in fact, is if it was free. Which, by fortunate chance, it currently (and temporarily) is. You know what to do with an open door, don’t you?
* If you’re wondering, the worst is World Poker Tour. It’s very, very bad.
This is still WSOP, not WPT. But it deserved to be seen.
November 3, 2010 at 7:03 pm
Sounds pretty similar to the excellent WSOP series on the PSP, where entire tournaments could be whizzed through at a right old crack. One thing irks me about this release though, the sizeable 108MB-sized chunk of space it requires. No-one in their right mind would get the game because it contains “HIGH QUALITY Video cut-scenes”, and even the few drooling tools that would won’t watch them more than twice. Oh, won’t anyone think of the 8GB iThing owners?
November 3, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Mm. I absolutely loathe all video sequences in iThing games, not least because they always initially display with the iOS screen furniture splashed all over them, which makes them look shit. And never mind the poor 8GB owners, I currently have to delete something off my 32GB iPhone every time I want to install something new. Fuck off with the bloatware cutscenes, everyone.
November 3, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Hands up, ya Bums!
November 4, 2010 at 3:03 pm
I had to get started with this game THREE times. I got the free version with just a couple of playable events. Then a week later they made a huge revision of the free version which turned it into the entire game (minus multiplayer), and everything reset and I had to start from scratch. And now I’ve grabbed the full paid app while it’s free.
It sucks knowing the 108MB is mostly video. Unlike the bloated size of Apple’s Texas Hold ‘Em app, the video isn’t even relevant to the gameplay. Come to think of it, I can delete Apple’s game now. This is so superior.
They promise a retina update. That’s going to add a few more megs.
Oh, and apparently the AI gets a bit cheaty at the highest levels. People complain that the “best” AI must know your cards and the community cards before they’re dealt. No matter to me – I’m rubbish and I won’t reach that stage! I’ll just sit next to You-Jin and play for pennies
November 4, 2010 at 4:02 pm
The later events are structured very weirdly. I’ve made it into the WSOP Main Event, which has 30 players in tables of 10. But unlike real poker, you basically play to qualify from your own table, then your chip count gets reset and you play a second table, then your chip count is reset again and you play the final table for the bracelet. It’s really strange, but it doesn’t actually make the game less good.
Couldn’t say I noticed any cheaty AI (I’ve played the Main Event six times now, with a best finish of 3rd), but then I wasn’t looking for it. Will keep my eyes peeled for suspicious behaviour next time.
November 4, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Developers Glu deserve a lovely big cake the pleasing way you swipe your cards away to fold, or tap the table twice to check. Being able to swipe your hand away in disgust before it’s even your turn means they get Cadbury’s chocolate buttons sprinkled on top of that cake.
Sadly, the fact that when asked “Would you like to rate this app?” at the end of a game, there’s nothing to warn you that it means you’re getting kicked out of the app and into Safari (meaning you need to sit through all the loading screens again before you can continue playing poker) means I’ve just spat in it.
November 16, 2010 at 8:29 am
So it’s worth deleting zynga poker for this? i guess that makes it only 100 more..
maybe that should be a feature for podgamer: worth deleting xx for?
what i’m am actually doing now on my 16gb is deleting more and more music, listening more and more to self updating podcast.. but it is shame, as that way the surprise element my 15gb old ipod is less and less there, as there are only 300 songs left..