Poker Date

Poker Date combines a Royal Deck variation of five-card stud poker with the tired and true XBLIG staples of anime boobies and inept programming.  The result is one of the most hilariously awful games I’ve ever played.  First off, Royal Decks are constructed using everything 9 through Ace out of two decks.  Poker Date only uses one deck worth of cards.  Granted, this is simply a heads-up match, but still, it limits the amount of hands to work with.  Second, when the AI folds a hand, it pronounces it “I foiled.”

I foiled.

I swear to fucking God.

I.  F-O-I-L-E-D!

Maybe Sabrina thought she was at a fencing tournament.

Now I’m certainly not one to cast stones at speech impediments.  I have enough trouble pronouncing my own name.  But seriously, you can’t say “fold” correctly?  Good God.  This totally trumps Capcom’s use of Sally from accounting in the all time horrible and lazy voice acting department.  And if any other aspect of this game had been remotely competent, “I foiled” could have become the next big gaming meme.  But, nobody’s going to stick around long enough for that.

The biggest problem is actually how damn smart the AI is.  Without fail, if I was dealt a good hand, the AI would foiled on the spot.  Unless it knew that it had me.  And by knew, I mean it could then change four cards in its hand while I’m holding a two pair, aces and tens.  It then wins with a full house or a flush.  This isn’t luck, we’re talking.  Every single time the AI chucked four cards or more, it won.  The only explanation is the AI could see what cards it would get, or which ones I would get.  But, most of the time, whenever I got anything remotely nice, it foiled immediately.  Fucking clairvoyants aren’t this good.

For some reason, none of the marketplace shots actually show any cards.

Oddly enough, after changing out cards, the AI almost never foiled.  I actually counted it out over the course of 100 hands that went to the second round of betting.  The AI never once foiled, and won 87 out of 100 hands.  What the fuck?  Which is not to say the AI doesn’t bluff.  During the first round, I took to raising every chance I had, because when I did this, out of 38 opportunities, the AI foiled 25 times.  So after a couple of hours of play, I settled into a rut where neither me nor the AI would gain enough ground to actually win.  Betting is slow and limited and you certainly can’t put all your chips in play.  Finally, I realized I was playing the single worst video poker game ever made and foileded myself.  Poker Date is pretty much the worst thing to happen to the game since Darvin Moon.

Poker Date was developed by Mikirius

$1 said “Poker? I barely know her” in the making of this review.