Full House Poker

[Murgatroyd7]

Who else has been playing? I know at least two of us play; I'm just wondering if there might be more. I am borderline obsessed with it at the moment (I love games that I can play while doing other stuff), but the online has become so glitchy. I don't know what the heck happened, but it wasn't at all like this before release. The beta had some kinks, but it certainly wasn't this bad. And when I played with other reviewers, it worked almost perfectly. Now it's all screwy and Texas Heat doesn't work properly. And worst of all, there are already cheaters. It took less than a week for half of the people to start cheating. I hope this all gets fixed soon because it really is a great game otherwise.

[DeYanKees1]

I love poker and want to give it a try but I'm all out of points and wont have for a while Hopefully they fix the glitchy stuff and cheaters by the time I get it lol.

[Tyler P.]

I love Texas Heat and I took you out last night Chris! lol.

I guess I havent invested enough time to see these glitches.

[Murgatroyd7]

Oh, you just wait until I bring my A-game! I was doing amazing yesterday when Texas Heat started. I was taking people out left and right and got The Devastator three or four times (bust out 4 or more people in one hand). My bankroll was about 4 million (and I had about 20,000 XP). Then when I came back for the second block of games, everything went horribly awry. The cards just weren't working in my favor at all; no matter how good my hand was, somebody else had something better. Then when I got knocked down to Double Diamond, I couldn't play as aggressively because you can't go all-in there (which I didn't realize until too late). It took me the rest of the night to back up to Triple Diamond. Ugh, what a bad day for me! Thankfully, I'm back up where I belong and I've got my Life Preserver again. Now I just have to wait until Saturday...and that 5-million achievement will be mine.

I really like Texas Heat, but it's not nearly as good as it was before release. One particularly annoying thing is that the medals don't work, currently making the gold medal achievement impossible to unlock. Everybody is getting a rank of -1 except for the top player, and nobody is unlocking the achievement. It worked just fine during the beta and review period, but not now. There are also issues with the game freezing, disconnecting, or putting people in rooms with AI opponents. For two hours last night, I was stick in Texas Heat with all AI; there wasn't a single human opponent in the room. There's no need for this to happen when there are 14,000+ people playing simultaneously. I can understang lag and temporary freezing being caused by a burden on the servers, but come on.

And the cheating is getting really annoying. If you quit a standard match as you're being dealt your cards, you will receive double of whatever the buy-in is. So, if you go into a match with a 10,000 chip buy-in and then quit, you'll get that back plus another 10,000. And I believe it's in the ranked tournaments where you can disconnect from the internet before getting your cards and you will automatically win second place. There are also times when all of the other players will suddenly drop out of the game; it declares me as the winner, which is great, but I'm robbed of a game. Bankroll and XP are both super easy to exploit in singleplayer, so the whole purpose of playing online is to play against actual people.

What frustrates me the most is that although there were some glitches, most of them weren't present before release (or we at least didn't run into some, like the cheating). Because I know how fun this game can be without all of the issues, I still stand by my review, but I hate that it sounds insincere compared to the released product. Thankfully, the developers have said they're working on fixing some of the problems. If we don't have an update by next week, I might have to update my review.

I do still really enjoy the game, though, and I look forward to playing more matches...but possibly not until next week because I'm working on some new reviews. I'll hopefully have my headset working by then; I'm going to try fixing it by using some of the parts from another one. I rarely use a headset, so I get cheap ones from China that cost about a dollar...unfortunately, they are quite delicate. One broke because of my fat head and one seems to have a short in it.


DeYankees,
If you love poker, then you should definitely check this out when you have the points for it. But I suggest waiting until some of the problems have been fixed. Of course, you don't want to wait too long if you care about achievements because three of them will only be available for a couple of months.

[DeYanKees1]

Ill be purchasing a bunch of points in the coming weeks probably 2 4000mp cards. Got to buy a ton of stuff lol Castlevania DLC, Full house Poker, Beyond good and evil and the RE4 and RE:CV remakes coming out in the fall. Got to be prepared.

[Murgatroyd7]

Ooh, fun. Let me spend your points for you! Ha ha. Not sure if you've played it yet, but if you like puzzle games, I highly recommend ilomilo (and its DLC). Definitely one of the best XBLA games ever made.

[StatiK TactiK]

Yeah ilomilo was pretty good. I dont know if I'd put it up there as one of the best XBLA games personally but it was definitely fun and worth a try if you're into puzzlers. Some of those levels got pretty hard, especially rescuing all those damn Safkas lol.

[Murgatroyd7]

My memory is awful, so I can't remember if we ever discussed the game or not. Heh. But for me, it's definitely one of the best. The visual style is amazing and that alone is worth the price. And playing it just made me feel happy. Even when I had to backtrack or restart a level when I was so close to the end, I was just happy to be playing it. I had a very strong emotional response that I don't normally have with games. And besides that, it was really fun and clever. The only actual problem I had with it was not being able to control them with the D-pad.

It is still the only game I have ever rated a 10/10. Off the top of my head, the only other XBLA games I can think of that I would rate a 10/10 (if I were to review them) are Plants Vs. Zombies and Uno.

[StatiK TactiK]

Shadow Complex? Limbo?

And yeah playing it did give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside lol. Had a really charming art style. I especially liked the music and that achievement for playing the theme song on the main menu lol.

[DeYanKees1]

I remember playing the trial for Ilomilo it was fun. Just have to see how much ever other arcade game come out to and I might DL it.

[Murgatroyd7]

Shadow Complex? Limbo?

And yeah playing it did give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside lol. Had a really charming art style. I especially liked the music and that achievement for playing the theme song on the main menu lol.

Oh yeah, I loved that achievement. It was pointless and simple, but I thought it was fun. That's one of my favorite main menus. Heh. Shadow Complex is a good game, but it didn't really wow me. And Limbo is great, but it's also somewhat shallow. I loved the style, but the actual gameplay wasn't terribly interesting.

I remember playing the trial for Ilomilo it was fun. Just have to see how much ever other arcade game come out to and I might DL it.

You must. If you don't, I'll make you regret it...

I'm just not sure how yet.

[Murgatroyd7]

Not sure if anyone checks the achievement thread anymore, so I thought I'd mention that I got the freakin' gold medal achievement yesterday. Despite how simple it should've been, that was one of the most difficult and frustrating achievements ever because of how bad the online servers for Texas Heat are. So glad I managed to get that before the end of the Spring 2011 season.