World Championship Poker All In developed and published by Crave Entertainment in 2006 is at its best an extremely mediocre poker game in a genre that doesn't translate well into console video games.
Poker video games have never been a great means of entertainment and pleasure since the birth of the internet. Poker is readily available online and on the computer to play for fun and even real money. Having previously been a budding poker professional I find it pretty hard to play a video game based on something i can play over the internet. Don't get me wrong their are some good poker video games out there such as the World Series of Poker games, but World Championship Poker All in is simply bad. The gameplay is ok, I mean it is a poker game there isn't exactly that much a developer could get wrong, but even the gameplay in All In has its flaws such as a what seems like not so random hand generator. The meat and potatoes to the game is the career mode. In this mode you must take your created player and take him from the dingy backroom strip joint poker games to the biggest events around the globe. The career progresses in week long intervals, and each week you can play in a game, check out and customize your crib, and go to the saloon to change your attire. There are a number of different events and types of poker to play such as Razz, Hold em, 7 card stud, and omaha. This is one of the few things All In gets right. There are also cash games and tournaments available throughout the career. What fails with the career mode is that you are given so little cash to start, and therefore any poker game worth playing will not be accessible. You have to spend hours and hours grinding the cash games and lower buy in tournies to even afford 1 entry into a decent event. I found the career mode such a grind that I couldn't play more than a few hours of it.
World Championship Poker All In tries to separate itself from other poker games by making the style and visuals of the game completely over the top and crazy. All of the people who you will be playing with at the tables look like they are from the year 2287 and are dressed in the craziest outfits. The colors of the game including the poker tables and environments and even the loading screens all are extremely bright and come right at your face bro. The style is kinda neat for how over the top it is, but most of the graphical aspects of the game fail as they look like a game from 2001. The audio in the game is some of the worst stuff I have seen in any game. The players at the table spurt out these awful one liners, and the audio levels are extremely inconsistent. One music track will be playing at normal volume, and then all of a sudden the track will change and the volume will be magnified by 10 resulting in ear bleeding. There are only a few generic tracks in the game, and it is really a bummer that there is no commentators in the game.
Overall World Championship Poker All In fails to do anything well and is a very below average game and one of the worst in the card playing video game genre. I was also surprised to see that Crave Entertainment have put out some pretty good games in the past such as earthworm jim and gex games, and the pinball hall of fame collections.
1.5 stars (3.5)