Casino ps2

Don't bet on this one

Hard Rock Casino is the newest game from Crave for the PS2, now while Crave also released World Championship Poker: All In just a couple months ago; Hard Rock Casino brings a lot more to the table in an attempt to deliver an authentic gambling atmosphere. Unfortunately, all the bets didn&#;t fall into place for this one.

Hard Rock Casino does have an interesting interface to it. You start at a virtual representation of the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas (later on there are three more unlockable casinos), you can then access each area of the casino to move to your gambling game of choice. There are 21 different types of casino games available. Aside from poker standbys like Texas Hold &#;em, 5 Card Stud, and Omaha, there are also an interesting amount of other casino games that live up the game&#;s title that don&#;t appear in most gambling sims such as Keno, Slots, Roulette and Craps. Other noteworthy card games available are Blackjack (believe me, such a common game isn&#;t that common in most poker games today) and a variant of beat the dealer called &#;Casino War.&#; Variety is one of the few positives in Hard Rock Casino.

One thing that did surprise me is that you can actually place bets on sports and horse races. That&#;s the first time I&#;ve seen that in a gambling sim. It actually adds makes the game live up to the casino part of the title. As intriguing as sports betting sounds however, the menu layout is very poorly designed, and I found myself very confused to getting bets to actually work.

The main way to play Hard Rock Casino is the oddly named Adventure mode. It has somewhat of a story to it where it is separated by chapters, with comic book panels telling the story of your would-be high roller hitting the casino in hopes of making it big. Anyways, that lame storytelling aside, you&#;ll progress to each of the four casinos with each chapter of Adventure mode having a list of goals for you to complete like successfully progressing bets four times in Texas Hold &#;em, and managing to role the dice at least seven time in a row on Craps. It&#;s different, but just isn&#;t as compelling and interesting like the main career modes in games like World Championship Poker or World Series of Poker.

The other main drawback of Hard Rock Casino is that it has a very lackluster presentation. The menus for almost all the poker and casino games appear mostly clustered and have no sense of organization to them. When cards are dealt to you, they just appear like they would on a PC flash-based game, not in the actual motion that is trying to represent a real casino. This ultimately ends up being the deathblow as the lack of atmosphere results in a lack of immersion, which results in a lack of fun.

Hard Rock Casino has a few ways to play, you can quick play any of the game for practice except for sports betting, and then there are tutorials that help you understand what is going on. There is no multiplayer whatsoever, with it being a budget game retailing for $, I don&#;t blame them for not supporting online play, but I would have preferred there being offline multiplayer for games that could have managed it like Blackjack or Craps. However, it is worth mentioning most other gambling games on PS2 retail for $$30 and feature a lot of the aforementioned multiplayer features.

Graphically, Hard Rock Casino is bowling shoe ugly. I don&#;t even think these visuals can pass for a Dreamcast game. Character models look generic and lack a lot of detail, the environments of the casino look all right, but just have too much of a static feel to them. As I mentioned above the lack of animation in most card games really hurt the overall feel of the game. There isn&#;t a whole lot here for sound also aside from a bunch of generic throwaway background music tracks and annoying taunts from your rivals.

Overall, Hard Rock Casino ranks near the bottom of the barrel. It does introduce a few unique casino style elements to freshen things up a bit and make it seem different from most other games of the genre. Unfortunately the bad far outweighs the good. Avoid this one at all costs.

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