World Series of Poker 2008: Battle for the Bracelets | A Good game IF you have the right video...

World Series of Poker 2008: Battle for the Bracelets | Great Game - Excellent A.I.

pc & video games:

World Series of Po...

	World Series of Poker 2008: Battle for the Bracelets Windows \| Activision, 2007 average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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With World Series of Poker 2008: Battle for the Bracelets, the intense action you've come to expect from the #1 poker game francise gets cranked up even higher as you enter the largest sporting event in the world - the World Series of Poker, with the challenge to Beat The Brat - Phil Hellmuth! Build the bankroll and face off against some of the world's top pros including Johnny Chan, Chris ?Jesus? Ferguson, Mike ?The Mouth? Matusow, Greg Raymer, Annie Duke, Phil ?Unabomber? Laak, Humberto Brenes, Marcel ?They Flying Dutchman? Luske, David ?Devil Fish? Ulliott, and Shannon Elizabeth in your quest to win the championship bracelet for the $10,000 Main Event. With heated heads-up tournament action, more poker tutorials, more locations, and the most stacked list of A-list pros ever in a video game, this year's game is upping the high-stakes like never before!

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A Good game IF you have the right video card and driver...

I have experienced the same video problems that many others have with this game. When I first purchased the game I was using an ATI X850XT video card and had no problems playing this game. I recently upgraded my video card to an NVidia 8800GT and the game would go "crazy" after about five minutes with flashing and flaky video problems to where I could barely figure out how to exit the game. It was unplayable and very frustrating. I looked for updates from Activision (of which there were NONE) and read many complaints on the net about others having problems as well. I even updated my video drivers to the latest version at the time. Nothing worked UNTIL today! I just updated my video drivers to the latest version (version 169.38) and now it works perfectly! I don't know what it is about the older NVidia drivers, but they fixed something in this latest version that also fixed the video issues with this game. I recommend anyone who has a fairly recent NVidia card to update to this driver version and see if it works for you. I don't think the ATI cards are having same issues, but I could be wrong. Hope this helps! As far as the game itself, it is very enjoyable once it all works and I do recommend it if you can get it to work properly.

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Great Game - Excellent A.I.

TECHNICAL REVIEW:
I'm running the game on Windows 2000. It works flawlessly except when I go into Phil Hellmuth's Poker School. The video side box with Phil talking cuts in and out(sound); making this part of the game useless. I'm disappointed by this and hope a patch will fix it. Other than that, I haven't experienced any video or sound related problems running 1024x768 screen resolution.

SPEED REVIEW:
Speed Issues:
Normal:
The game in Normal mode is just way too slow all the way around. The PC players react at a snails pace. After one or two games at this speed, you'll be wanting for a faster game.

Medium:
At medium speed, the game is just about right. The pc players make their decisions reasonably quickly as does your own player; most of the time.
Sometimes, even in medium speed, there is an unacceptable delay between your input command being followed. Overall, its ok most of the time.

Here's where the game could be better:
When in medium speed, the game should 'slow down' when 2 or more players go 'all in'. The suspense is a bit lost when the Turn and River cards come up too quickly.

My hope for future versions of the game would be to have pc players to bet within about 4 seconds; about what they do at medium speed now. Then, on an 'all-in' bets to slow down to the 'Normal' level for the turn and river. That would be the best of both worlds!

Fast:
The players fly through their bets like lightning. It's a nice feature to have if you want to play a quick tourney. But, a lot of the game experience is lost when playing fast.

GAMEPLAY, GRAPHICS, AI:
The artificial intelligence is first rate. These pc players are highly skilled. They come over the top & bluff with precision. If you win a bracelet, you've earned it! The graphical representation of the players is good and their voices are real.

CONCLUSION:
A fun game when played at the Medium speed level. Still, to enhance the game, the speed needs to be tweaked a bit; pc players need to make their bets faster and 'All-In' bets slower at Medium speed level. Some technical issues to overcome. A patch would be nice. I totally recommend the game.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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