For some reason, Activision's $40 poker title, World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions has yet to garner a single review on MetaCritic, despite being the first game to showcase the Vision Camera's Digimask facial mapping technology. That's a shame because right now it's the best reason to pick up a Vision. I'm not an expert when it comes to poker (either the real or video game variety) but this game is a worthy upgrade from the bare bones XBLA version that most people downloaded for free, if only for the chance to...um... play with yourself.Point blank, the Digimask tech just works. You snap a pic from the front and side profile and the game takes a couple minutes to map your face over a 3D frame. I tried it under mediocre lighting conditions and it worked on the first try. Speaking as a geek who spent hours painstakingly building my virtual doppelganger in the last Tiger Woods (long the Cadillac of create-a-character modes), poor, forgotten WSoP presented me with most accurate representation of my own handsome face I've ever seen in a game, It does warp your lower face a bit, but the eyes, ears and nose were spot on. I've only slept about 6 hours over the past couple days and it was awesome to see the same black under eye circles I saw in the mirror on my newly created me. The 3D modeling is a vast improvement over previous attempts at this sort of thing. In fact, the detail was so good that my wife refused to give it a shot without doing her make-up. I tried it again sporting a Mr. T "Pity the fool" scowl to see if it could handle a little emotion and the results were equally impressive.The Digimask creator gives you a few rudimentary ways to tweak the final product by adjusting the width/height of your head, etc. which will have to do until they combine facial mapping with Tiger-style sliders. I can definitely see Digimask becoming a must-have feature for every create-a-character mode hence forth.
Of course, I immediatley took my evil twin online to test my bluffing abilities. WSoP lets you switch to in to a first person mode so you can admire the other Digimasks around the table. The guys I played with all agreed that the face creation was remarkably accurate. Unlike, other camera-enabled games, the video window only appears when it's your turn to bet. Ideally, this would give the other players a chance to look for tells. The picture is a little too small to catch your buddies twitching upper lip, but it's do-able in theory. Gameplay wise, it's poker -- but with a enough graphical flourish and animations to keep your attention, even if you're not a degenerate gambler. I was lucky enough to play with a group of people who treated their chips with respect instead of going all in every hand and it made for a realistic round of TV-style tournament action. I didn't get too far into the single player mode, which is hosted by poker star Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, but it looks like it has unusual potential for the card game genre.
Overall, I would say WSoP is the deepest "social" game on the market right now and really deserves to be bundled with the Vision. Pick it up for the Digimask stuff, and play it because you're bored to tears with Uno. Oh, and if all this pretend gambling makes you wish you could play for real MS points, you're not alone.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-21-2006 @ 11:48PM
plaidspeed said...
All that talk of how great it looks, but no pictures?!
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9-22-2006 @ 12:21AM
Pyronite said...
Ditto. I wanted to see some pictures. :'(
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9-22-2006 @ 12:48AM
xboxer said...
I've been hoping this game is a lot better than the previous iterations. Vision sound cool, but only if the game itself isn't as bad as the others.
I was on vacation with nobody to d/l the free XBLA Texas Hold 'Em. I'm a bitter man about that free for 48 hours thing and refuse to pony up MS Points. So instead of a few hundred MS points, I'll pay $40 for a different poker title. That is called "Bitter Man Logic".
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9-22-2006 @ 1:35AM
Chuck said...
I've been playing this for an hour now and it's pretty fun. The animation is pretty hilarious since they move like a japanese b-movie that's been dubbed.
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9-22-2006 @ 3:41AM
justin said...
I think that's a great idea. The camera is going to be a big success.
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9-22-2006 @ 5:47AM
KineticOnline said...
Does anyone know when this is getting a european release, game, gamestop, hmv and play.com don't have it listed at all
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9-22-2006 @ 8:30AM
Intangible 360 said...
Interesting, I'm very glad to hear that the digimask works very well. I look forward to using it in Rainbow Six: Vegas.
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9-22-2006 @ 9:08AM
Brent said...
I would love to buy this game but I want to try the camera first. Unfortunatly all the stores in my state didnt get any cameras yet.
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9-22-2006 @ 9:10AM
Nuclear Water said...
Maybe there's no reviews because the camera is not widely available yet. I haven't found a single camera for sale in the SF Bay area.
Microsoft apparently shipped SOME elsewhere EXCEPT here.
I'll try again today
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9-22-2006 @ 9:22AM
Ken said...
Guys -- My girl took my digital camera to work for some reason and left it there. That's why there's no pics. I'll take some tonight.
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9-22-2006 @ 9:39AM
Shamma Banks said...
I just read on engadget That MS is extending warranties for all 360's made in 2005. The new warranty will be for a year. Looks like I will get to play something beside three red lights pretty soon.
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9-22-2006 @ 1:56PM
jon said...
since the vision cam came up....i just got one on tues. at toys r us but the damn thing wont work...called tech support, they told me to return it and get another one...to make a long story short the cam works on my pc but not on my 360...apparently my usb ports are ALL broken...has anyone else had problems such as this...microsoft customer support told me they would be glad to fix these for $130.00....WTF?
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9-22-2006 @ 9:33PM
a2 said...
Still no camera available where I'm at and I fail to understand why.
I think I'm going to give up trying to locate one.
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9-24-2006 @ 1:01PM
Intangible 360 said...
@Ken
Camera still stuck at work?
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9-25-2006 @ 10:25AM
shibumi said...
Ken -
Just curious if your girl ever did the digimasking. My wife was cracking up over how well it worked when I did it, so we tried one on her...
The digimasking came out fine, but then it looks like we found an issue in the game.
It asks if your digimask is male or female, we obviously picked female, but then it had all of the same body / clothing choices as the male... Ummmmm... what's up with that!?!?
We tried it a second time - just to make sure we did indeed pick 'female' - and same thing...
So - guys - unless you want your girl looking like a SR thug in a hoody - or a butched-up version of Rosie O'Donnell, better leave the digimasking to the guys.
Did anyone else get the female digimasking to work??
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9-25-2006 @ 11:48AM
Crankbait said...
Bumi -
You should post a link to the picture of how yours turned out....
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9-25-2006 @ 2:49PM
shibumi said...
Thanks Crank - for subjecting me to the riddicule... lol
Here's my digimask:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shibumi2k/sets/72157594295622380/
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