Ever since the early 2000s, Texas Hold’em has grown exponentially in popularity. This gambling phenomenon has led to tons of TV coverage, huge prize pots, and playing poker becoming a viable career. Along with these new ways to enjoy poker, the gaming industry embraced the card game and many titles allowed players to enjoy high stakes poker from the comfort of their own homes. Most of these games were authentic, casino-style poker. However, there were also some games that tweaked the conventional poker experience to great effect, games like Texas Cheat’em.
What is Texas Cheat’em?
Texas Cheat’em is a game that was released back in 2009 that was developed by a studio called Wideload Games. This game takes the usual Poker gaming experience and turns it on its head, asking players to lie, cheat and bend the rules to get ahead. The game offers a variety of mini-games relating to the popular casino game, Texas Hold’em, and allows you to steal chips, view opponents’ hands, and swap out cards as needed, so long as you are sneaky enough to pull it off.
This whole process works with players betting as normal to build up cheat points. Then these points can be used to buy any of the fifteen offensive or fifteen defensive cheats available. You would think that this would lead to absolute chaos but surprisingly, the gameplay is rather balanced and allows gamblers to enjoy high-stakes poker from the comfort of their own living room.
How Was This Game Received?
The game was received relatively well by critics and fans of the genre. The chaotic yet balanced gameplay was a huge selling point for this game and the unique concept worked well to draw poker fans in. However, the game was not without its flaws. The game visually was pretty lacklustre when compared to games of the time, the fact that there was only one type of Poker was criticized by players and the game’s AI isn’t exactly equipped for lying, cheating, and stealing required to get ahead in this game.
According to the popular gaming review aggregator Metacritic, this game managed to achieve a respectable average score of 62%, and this was based on nine separate reviews. When compared to the most recent Poker game of this gaming era Poker Club, Texas Cheat’em fared much better as Poker Club only managed 53% across four user reviews which tend to be more favourable. In short, Texas Cheat’em was a fun novelty for Poker fans to enjoy. However, its visuals and poorly implemented AI stopped this game from being anything more than average. Click here for more information on Book of Dead.
Facts
First released: 14th May 2009
Developer: Wideload Games
Publisher: D3 Publisher
Platforms: PS3, PC
Aggregate review score: 62%
Multiplayer functionality: Yes