Voofoo Studios, a video game development company based out of Birmingham, in the UK, announced that they are almost done doing work on Pure Hold’Em, the first next-gen poker experience for the PlayStation 4 console. Voofoo studios wants to bring a beautiful, high definition poker experience to your living room, where you can expect stunning visuals and silky-smooth gameplay and a very pure poker experience, we’re quivering with anticipation here at PS4 Home.
Pure Hold’em allows you to set up tables with up to eight other players, and you can set up a private game with all of your friends, or just search online for a table with an opening so you can join any ongoing game. If you’re new to poker, there’s also a single player mode that pits you against computer controlled opponents so you can play to your heart’s content without affecting your online leader-board ranking, but poker is a complex game, so it’s good to have some kind of guide you can use to learn and play better, using the rules to your advantage.
According to Voofoo’s online community manager, Emily Cree, “the single player campaign of tournaments also has plenty to offer too – start your journey at the Joker table and work your way up to top of the Masters table. Buy your way into a game with credits, play your blinds, go all in – whatever it takes to steal the pot and win the game. If Lady Luck is on your side, you could win big and get the chance to enter a higher level table. The higher you go, the higher the stakes and the bigger the winnings! Don’t worry if you lose it all though, we’ve also included a High/Low game you can play to gain daily extra credits so you can start over!”
Customization is the name of the game, so you’re able to determine everything from the ambient lighting to the colour of the cloth on the table and even the design on both the card decks and chips. According to Cree, “our artists have been hard at work creating two different environments to play in – the atmospheric casino, and for those of you who reach the prestigious Aces and Masters table you can advance up into the beautiful VIP penthouse” and she also added that “we’ve also included many more options for you to customize – everything from the colours and the patterns of the table felt, right up to choosing which set of cards and poker chips you want to play with.”
The game also includes a tutorial section that will help you get familiarized with the myriad of rules that the game has. Once you get the hang of it, it’ll become second nature and you’ll be a card ace in no time, who knows? you might even be able to one day challenge pro players like Phil Hellmut or Jason Mercier, and if luck is on your side that day, you might even come out ahead (or in a worse case scenario, break even).
It’s also good to mention that poker is good mental exercise: you get to practice a lot of mental calculation to keep track of winnings and losses, it teaches analytical thinking so you can make strategic decisions on the fly and most of all it teaches you patience: if you go into poker trying to brute force your way through the game you’ll probably hit a wall sooner than later so it’s best to approach the game in careful manner. It’s a lot like 2011’s Dark Souls in that losing is a big part of the learning process and if you make bad decisions, you’ll be punished harshly and frequently by it, but once you get the hang of it, you can dominate the opposition (but you still have to be careful, because a false move can and probably will cost you); or maybe like the soon to be released street fighter IV.
Some people may be disappointed to hear that all bets are for play money (as opposed to cold, hard cash bets) and there’s currently no plans to implement it, with the caveat that in order to play online you need a service called PlayStation Plus, which costs £46 a year on average.
Pure Hold’em teaser trailer
If you’re not interested in playing for cash, then Pure Hold’em will, by all means, be a very solid option. The graphics look gorgeous, and the PlayStation 4 is more than powerful enough to run the game without hiccups at a steady 30 frames per second, so you don’t even have to worry about performance because it will definitely be a silky-smooth experience; And Voofoo is an already experienced developer, having been around since 2007; they have several games under their belt, including ones for the PS3, Xbox 360 and the PS Vita, such Pure Chess, Pure Pool, Hustle Kings, Backgammon and twin-stick shooter Big Sky Infinity, so we’re confident that Voofoo will be able to deliver the goods.
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