Is Texas Hold 'em on XBLA broken?
While some of us who downloaded Texas Hold 'em haven't noticed any particular game breaking issues, some players have some meaningful gripes they've brought to the table. One such blogger brings up a slew of issues that he feels should have been fixed before the game was allowed to be released.
To most it may seem like mere subjective annoyances, but some complaints are warranted. We've already heard of one glitch or bug that hasn't been addressed: Apparently if everyone goes all in on the first hand, all players come out a winner and the person who actually wins the hand gets a substantial sum.
Check after the break for a complete rundown of the issues brought to light and feel free to share you own XBLA poker horror story. We suppose that old saying may be true: "You get what you pay for."
The Modern Geek's list of complaints:
Duplicate card problems. This guy got pocket 10s of clubs. Uh...shouldn't that be impossible? Supposedly the 4 and 5 of diamonds have the same graphic, too.
Dog-slow and wasteful UI. Why throw our chips into the pot and back out again when everyone else folds? Why does the table reset (slowly) to a top-down view after every hand, then slowly angle back down again? When everyone is all-in and the cards are showing, why does it ask you if you want to show your cards to the other players after the hand?
Takes forever to get into the game. You have to wait for the big blind to come around to you before you can play (so you can't play a few free hands and leave if you don't get a good draw). Fair enough, but every other poker place in the world seems to have solved that by letting you immediately match the big blind out of position to be dealt right in.
Observation/waiting issues. You can't continue to watch a hot tournament table after you've been eliminated, which should be an obvious option for such a social game (especially since new players can't hop in on tournament play, so you don't need to free up the seat). You also can't sit out a hand, which makes it really hard to go use the bathroom or something - another obvious omission.
Cheating. Apparently there's a way to immediately quit tournament games and have it think you were the winner and award you the full prize. The online leaderboard, at some point yesterday, showed the top spot being 800,000 bucks with only 40 hands played. Whaa?
