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THE GOOD:
  • There's nice jazz music that plays on loop.
  • The game is customizable insofar as to how many players you want to have in a game, the dollar amount you wish to start with, whether or not there's a cap on the bidding, whether or not characters talk, how serious they are, the pace of the game, there's a (limited)face creator, and with some games(such as blackjack) you can alter the number of decks and such that are used.
  • The game serves as a fun learning tool for casino games, even including a tutorial mode.
  • There are many games to choose from such as blackjack, slots, baccarat, craps, roulette, poker(multiple styles and game alterations including a tournament mode), keno, horse racing and several others.

    THE BAD:

  • The game is very unbalanced. So much so that I give it a 2 out of 5 as a rating.
  • There seems to be a recognizable motive behind the game's structure, to get you to keep playing.

    SUMMARY:
    First, I'll start with saying that there is no reason to even mention graphics with this game. It's casino tables of different card and dice games with very limited animation. The graphics serve their purpose and there isn't much flare. If you were actually looking at a casino table...that's what you'd see in the game.

    You start out by creating a player and name. Then you can go and set up your environment with settings that include background noise and music, animations, player attitudes(whether or not they get chit-chatty...which only slows the game pace down and become irritating rather quickly). Then you get to decide whether or not you want to go through the tutorial mode. If you choose not to, you can turn it on at any point if you decide to play a game that you've never played before.

    You then get set loose on the casino floor right into the action and get to choose what game you want to play. You can enter and leave games whenever you want, even in the middle of one and your progress and bankroll is saved under your character so you can pick up where you left off, however the particular game you were playing starts over(your bankroll is saved).

    You start out with five thousand dollars, a modest amount for any casino, and with the right game it can disappear in one bet. Which brings the game to the loan department. You can take a loan out based on your credit rating if you loose all of your money. When your bankroll hits certain milestones, a flash screen pops up informing you that your credit has been extended. That just means that your potential allowable loan amount has increased. Below are the credit to loan ratios as I remember them:

  • At 5k you can borrow 1k
  • At 10k you can borrow 5k
  • At 25k you can borrow 10k
  • At 50k you can borrow 25k
  • At 100k you can borrow 50k
  • At 1 million you can borrow 100K (I've made it to 3.2mil and haven't seen any additional credit increases which leads me to believe that's all there are)

    Once you have rebuilt your bankroll, you need to pay back the loan officer. If you don't and you loose everything again...not only do you not get another loan but they take you out back, break your legs, leave you in the ally, call the cops and say that you got hit by a car.

    Just joking...

    Actually, if you don't pay back your loan and you loose everything a second time, you have to start over and reset your character stats, including your credit rating.


    I'll try to explain what I mean when I say that the game is unbalanced.

    With blackjack, it's rather easy to go in and bet everything, let it ride and end up at the highest credit rating and a 1.6 million dollar bankroll within just a few hands. What prevents you from doing that? Absolutely nothing. You start with 5k, and if it doesn't work out the way you wanted, all you've wasted is 3 minutes and you can start over and attempt it again.

    With poker, specifically Texas Hold'em, the computer is multi-faceted at screwing you over. You can play with up to 7 NPCs. This is where it gets a bit odd...noticeably odd.
    When you enter a low buy-in table, it's pretty common to beat all of the NPCs with a high card hand, or a pair of 4s. Even at the medium buy-in tables, you can beat all of the computer's players with two pair about 50% of the time. Now, if you have a 2 million dollar bankroll...it's not much fun playing at a low buy-in table($25) or even a medium buy-in table($250) since the return is so low when you win a hand. You want the high roller table($1000, no limit).

    At that table, in fact at any of the different limits, you will win big(respective to the buy-in) within the first 3 hands. Guaranteed. After that, the buy-in level represents a difficulty rating of sorts. Low buy-in($25) = easy, whereas a high buy-in($1000) = hard.

    This is where the game becomes unbalanced.

    On the high buy-in tables, if you fold out of a hand right off, it's extremely common for the pot to escalate to over $50k...and one of the NPCs beats the rest with a single pair. Not a bad thing, but it's just as common to see that if you would have held on and kept bluffing your bets...you would have won the pot with three of a kind or something of that fashion.

    If you hang on and keep betting in hopes of doing that, 90% of the time you end up with "high card" as a hand and any remaining NPCs that are still betting will have two pair.

    Screwed if you do, screwed if you don't.

    When you get a good hand, like pocket aces(2 aces) most of the time the NPCs all fold and you end up wining only $2,500 or less. Only once in a great while will you get a great hand and bait the NPCs to bet around and around again so you win $50k...but by that time you are already down $68k so you are in fact still in the hole.

    The more you fold right-off, the better your next hand will be. The game wants you to keep playing. Fold ten times in a row and you will end up getting a full house aces over kings. A good enough hand to keep you playing.

    There are people who have played poker there entire lives and have never seen a royal flush. I've played this game for over 5 months and have been beaten by one 4 different times.

    The higher the pot, the more likely the NPCs will beat you. The higher your bankroll, the more likely you are to loose consistently. I've had 4 of a kind beaten by a straight flush, a straight flush beaten by a royal flush, a full house(aces over kings) beaten by 4 of a kind...all of which were $120K+ pots. I've been beaten by a royal flush twice in a row. This scenario has happened dozens upon dozens of times for me. It really gets ridiculous at points.

    It's consistent to the point of you actually being able to call the NPCs hand based off of yours at a high roller table. Literally.


    The game is a fun learning tool. You can definitely use it to learn just about any game you might find in a casino without loosing any actual cash. The newer versions of the game include other games and further customization. Just don't think you will ever "beat the game" because you never will.

    Do you remember when you were a little kid playing your NES and there was a glitch in the game that caused you to die? You yelled "The game is cheating!" and your parents replied with "The game can't cheat."...this game takes that to a whole new level.
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