The rise of electronic poker games has gone hand in hand with the popularity of the Hold Em style of poker. This is where every player gets two cards, and has to use them in conjunction with five communal cards dealt face up on the table in order to make the best poker hand. As the game is less about the best hand, but more on maximising your return by gambling on who can bluff the best hand, it's an intensely human game, and it requires a deft touch to bring it to a computer.
Unfortunately the cute graphics and clear playing cards in Hold Em Poker on the N-Gage aren't matched by strong game play from the computer AI players. Don't get me wrong, the mechanics of the game are all here, and it's clear and easy to play, but it's really only suited for the beginner or casual poker player.
You'll also need to be reasonably familiar with the rules of Hold Em Poker, and how the raising, calling, checking and folding of hands in a game are handled, as the available help on this subject is minimal. To be honest, a full blown tutorial would need to be pretty complex, and the Hold Em variant is well known enough that the basic notes available under Help in the menu are sufficient.
Controlling the game is simple, you get a small menu popping up in the bottom left of the game screen with your available options at that point in the game. Scroll up and down to selct, and fire to confirm. If you need to make a bet, a second window comes up allowing you to increase or decrease your betting. It's now a matter of sitting back, letting your computer opponents make their move, and waiting until it rolls back to yourself.
All the moves the AI players make are relayed at the top of the screen, and that gives you all the information you need to play. What you don't get is the ability to look deep in their eyes and decide if they are bluffing or not – one pair of pixels is pretty much the same as any other in this game!
The AI skill level is average, it is possible to bluff computer players, but, quite rightly, if you do this too often they start to get suspicious. It feels that a lot of the computer AI is based around the pure percentages of winning a hand with the cards that the relevant player can see, with an 'error bar' value added to give some human nature to the playing. It's not going to stand up to the skill of a leading human player, but it's enough for some mobile poker fun.
There's a certain familiarity to Digital Chocolate's Cafe Hold Em Poker. If you've seen their Cafe Solitaire and Cafe Sudoku titles on the N-Gage, then you'll be instantly at home with the interface and graphics of Hold Em Poker.
The Cafe games all have a consistent avatar that you can customise, earning new clothes and items as you play through any of the games in the series. So, after opening up Cafe Hold Em Poker, my first step was to log in with my existing character and then to explore the cafes. These are 'rooms' that you can either join or set up yourself. If you can get more people in a room, you earn more points to win prizes and avatar goodies. My Cafe is called “Lagavulan” with the pass code of 57s4ac – pop that in and you can visit my cafe in any of the dChoc games.
It's a nice system that helps the game go viral and lets you bring in friends to play the game, but it's not quite suited for a multiplayer game like Hold Em Poker, because there is no option to play a multiplayer game with people visiting your cafe. Getting people in to socialise around a solitaire game is one thing, but the bluff and guile of poker needs more than one player.
A hotseat multiplayer is offered, so you can pass a handset around a group of friends together in the real world, but that kind of misses the point of a connected game on a mobile device, surely? I'm probably unusual in carrying a deck of cards when I go out at nights and to conferences (Yes! – Steve and Rafe), but surely if you're in a group you'd get some real cards and play that way?
And in all this talk of connected gameplay, sharing avatars and attracting friends, have you noticed not one mention of the N-Gage community? Yes the dChoc Cafe ecosystem is 100% dChoc's, and does not talk at all to the N-Gage community or the friends you have there. I pointed this out in the first title and wondered if Nokia are missing a trick here. They are.
Every Cafe title is enhanced whenever you get a new Cafe game. That should be the case with the N-Gage system, but Digital Chocolate seem to understand that more than Nokia. Which is great for the Cafe titles, but perhaps shows up some gaps in the next gen gaming system. What you have available for the N-Gage Arena is the 1000 points that you pick up for doing various things in the game, such as opening up a new table by winning at the first table in the career mode, or by winning a game with a Royal Flush. As before, it's a nice touch, but this appears to be the only fundamental change that Digital Chocolate have made to the game for its N-Gage release.
The good news is that this is currently the best N-Gage poker game, and unlike Glu's World Series of Poker, it has a decent trial version, clear graphics, and rewards consistent play. It's recommended to new poker players, and to those players looking for a workout before hitting a real life game, but the appeal beyond those circles will be limited – I'd probably point you towards the similar Cafe Solitaire, if you haven't got it already.
-- Ewan Spence, April 2009
AAN Score: 68%