Poker club appeared almost six months ago around the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S. In the meantime, the poker game has had the necessary updates and that is why we now sit down at this poker table to see if it is still worthwhile for a purchase.
You start Poker club by creating your own poker pro. Unfortunately, the number of options for creating your character is a bit sparse. You can choose from five different faces and some hairstyles, hair colors and eye colors and that’s about it. There are also some extra items of clothing, sunglasses, tattoos and objects for the poker table to unlock. Not really very special.
In terms of amount of content, it is not very special, but enough in itself. The game focuses entirely on the most famous poker variant, namely Texas Hold’em. The main part is the Poker Tour. Here you play a number of events, varying from cash games to tournaments. With each event you have a number of challenges to complete. Consider, for example, winning a number of hands (pots), eliminating other players or winning x amount of chips (playing chips). When you have completed enough challenges, you will unlock a number of new events.
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In addition to the Poker Tour, you can also just play a single cash game or tournament and it is also possible to join a poker club or set up one yourself. With this you can try to become the best poker club with your friends or complete strangers. Although there is not much else to notice about this function. In order to level up the club, you will have to hand over the necessary chips to the club, but there is little else to be gained from leveling up your poker club. You get some extras for the daily reward when you log in and there are some more exclusive items to unlock and that’s about it.
Then the poker itself. With every action you take while playing poker, you will receive a number of experience points (XP), with which you can level up your created character and thus unlock the necessary items of clothing and objects. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to see how much XP you have already earned and how much more you need to level up.
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Poker club runs on the Unreal Engine and so the game certainly doesn’t look bad. You can choose to direct the action from above onto the poker table or through the eyes of your created poker player. The latter is of course the best. You can look around and see the action up close. A few things are also happening in the background. For example, we played in a cafe where a number of people sit at the bar and a game of pool table is played. So there is a bit more atmosphere, although we quickly noticed that these are just a few animations that are repeated over and over.
Unfortunately, the game still has some technical problems and the animations feel a bit wooden. For example, it often happens that the big blind is already called or a raise is made, while two players still have to put their chips on the table in front of the small blind and big blind. There is little interaction between the players themselves. They mainly stare straight ahead and occasionally shift for a while. The animations when winning a game also look quite crazy. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an active community either. We often played against computer-controlled opponents and only occasionally did a human player join. There are only a few cash game tables available (with different stake amounts each) and tournaments are no longer being played at all.
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When asked whether it still makes sense to Poker club we can be certain that no, actually not. There are still some technical problems, the presentation looks messy and there doesn’t really seem to be an active community (anymore). And playing poker is the best against human opponents.
Poker Club was played on the Xbox Series for this review. The game is also available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
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