Full House Poker is the latest in many games to try and help amateur pokers players scratch their Texas Hold'em itch. It mixes Xbox Live Arcade avatar games and standard Texas Hold'em fun. Like other avatar games, you play as your avatar against anywhere from 1-9 other randomly selected avatars. Players can choose to either just play in an open game, a tournament against computers, online, or in pro-take downs.
For normal games you can choose to play against 1, 6, or 9 other computers with a buy in starting at $250. The nice thing about this style is that you don't ever have to worry about busting out because you can choose to buy back in or quit at any point. It helps to build a stronger bank because there is no ending limit, the computers will automatically buy back in no matter how many times they bust out, making the number of chips on the board increase. It's easy to buy in for $250 and end up quitting with well over $1,000. However who you end up against and what type of player they are is extremely random, one of the elderly avatars would frequently go all in on something like an ace high causing me to fold good hands. The computers aren't exactly "smart" players, and it becomes very hard to read what their raises mean. This is a problem with playing poker against AI - the bluffing feature is taken almost completely out of the game. Buy ins also increase with levels which I will discuss later in the review.
Setting up a tournament is as expected - you pick the number of table, the buy in, and the number of computer players to go after. The nice part about tournaments is that you don't have to win to get a larger bank. Coming in third means you get your buy in money back, second gets you a little extra, and first gives you double. It's a more structured way to play but you are limited to how much you can win so it doesn't build your bank as fast. However, the nice thing is bad AI players actually get punished for it, so the elderly avatar I mentioned above gets taken out usually early when I've been matched with him.
Pro take downs are something new, it's just you vs one person. Each pro take down plays a different way and they increase in buy in amounts. When you've leveled high enough you open the option to play a game against all the pros to win (or lose) a lot of chips. My only problem with pro take downs is the AI doesn't always play what they are labelled as. One of the players is basically supposed to be uptight with raises and he ended up raising me on every single hand regardless of what he had. The nice thing about the pro take downs is they are consistent, even if they don't play the way they are labelled they typically play the same every single time. It can hurt your bank but playing them three times in a row usually means a win. Beating the pros also open up costumes to wear in game to add to the level of customization.
Online play is pretty average, the main problems being finding a game and the type of people you play against. Some are very good and have no problem making you feel bad every time you bust. Some are gracious, and some have no clue what they are doing. Again, this range makes it hard to predict how you should play, but find a good table and you'll be fine.
The biggest addition seems to be the Texas Heat games, which are basically the new 1 vs 100. It's a massive amount of people all playing and switching tables, the goal being just play as many hands as fast as you can to either get the most chips or experience. There are overall winners, and people that get straights or above are rewarded with anything from a crappy 100 chips to over 1,000 depending on if they won with that hand, how much they won, etc. It's a bit confusing because you think you are winning what you got at the table, but you don't - that's just a way to determine your ranking. General experience gained is not great, if a person is trying to level this is not the way to do it, in half an hour playing against the computers you will gain a lot more. Chips however are nice, if you end up in the higher ranks with chip count say hello to a free 1,000 chips. However there is no buy ins for these games so whatever your rank the chips you get build your bank without costing you anything. My experience with this though was over all disappointing due to bad server connections. At one point I had a HUGE chip stack but everyone at my table had to quit out and rejoin because our server dropped and to be honest that really bummed me out.
The rest is pretty standard, your bank follows you from all game types. This is great for everything except the pro take downs which very quickly hit $1,000 buy in. You gain experience for everything from simply surviving another hand, or making other players fold out from buy counter raising them enough. Leveling starts off quickly (which is to be expected) and unlocks everything from new card types, to title types, to the standard larger buy in amounts for single player games. Pretty much everything can be customized, you can change costumes, cards, chairs, venues, and your title, etc etc. This isn't really needed but it does add a bit to the game that's sort of nice. Doing certain button combinations allows your avatar to do chip tricks while sitting at the table (you unlock more of those as well), and holding down either trigger while doing an action allows you to do so with uncertainty or confidence (not holding down a trigger means you just do it normally). This is useless because you can't trust it with the AI or for that matter when playing real people.
I would have liked to see people from my friends list around the single player casinos instead of just random avatars, it is nice that AI shows up many times though and keeps the same play style. Larry is one of the pro take downs and he always plays the same way regardless of what game mode he shows up in so it's nice being able to learn his ways. The achievements are a bit off. The first few happen so rapidly and easily and the last ones will take hours to get, there isn't much in the way of middle ground with achievements. Plus the Texas Heat will come in schedules (so it's spring now) meaning that if I don't get all three during the spring time they will become permanently unachievable. Also I am still waiting for better AI in a poker game but this game is an improvement over any other poker game I've played on the 360.
If you are new to Texas Hold'em it's not a bad game to learn on, again much better then any others for the 360 but over all the game doesn't really do anything new. I am a sucker for being able to customize little things so I do enjoy the little additions that most people just shrugged and glossed over. Fix the server issues and this would definitely be a 4. However, with that major bug this game doesn't change much from other poker games so 3 out of 5.
