The team from the Pure series is back, and this time they0re bringing one of my favorite games to life…. Texas Hold’em! Are they holding Pocket Aces or Pocket 2s?

Starting at the Jokers table on the floor of the vibrant casino work your way up to the esteemed Aces and Masters tables in the VIP penthouse.
Buy your way into a game with earned credits, play your blinds, or 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 pot.
With full online multiplayer support – you can choose to create a tournament with up to 7 friends or join an open table with other players looking for a quick poker fix.
Are you all in?

Pure Hold’Em — Launch Trailer | PS4

Last year I had the chance to review Pure Pool for PS4blog.net. At the time, I really liked it and appreciated the effort put into the game. Since then I have still played it consistently more than any of my other games, so I was very excited to hear they were working on a Texas Hold’em game.

Pure Hold’em is the first version of Texas Hold’em that’s been available on PS4. I really hope I don’t have to go into the details of the game as it’s a complicated game, and if you’re reading this, I assume you’re interested in Texas Hold’em Poker. If not click here for more details.

The game starts off by giving you 2000 chips that will get you two buy in’s to the Queen’s table. There are many tables that require higher and higher buy in’s, but thankfully there is also a table with no buy in so you can earn more chips back if you lose all of your money, which is likely to happen like it did to me early on.

When you enter a table it places you in a seat and you are sitting generally with a mixture of computerized and real online opponents. At each seat, each player is represented by a tablet with pictures of the computerized players and the PSN Avatars of the real people. Once your hole cards are dealt to you, they can be inspected by using the L2 button. Once the game is a foot you’ll start to bet on the strength of your hand. As you play, more bets are made and the dealer will then place the flop down and once again you can choose to fold or bet more. As you play the last two cards are dealt (“The Turn” and “The River”), and rounds of betting are conducted after each one. Once all the betting is finished everyone shows their hand, and the best combination of 5 cards wins!

As is to be expected from the series, the cards and tables look great. One of the details I really liked is that there are many different tables for you to play and each one has a different flair and a different set of cards. This helps to keep the experience fresh as you are essentially playing the same game over and over again, just at different degrees of risk.

The game starts off with some Jazz music which was not jiving with me… but then I was happy to find the options menu where I could change to different genres. For some reason, I ended up setting it to hip hop, which was better than the Jazz option. There a few different options so be sure to find the one that works for you.

I guess my only problem with the game is not the game’s fault per se, but more of a “sometimes I forget this is a simulation of a real thing” on my end. When you play poker in real life, you can read other players and study them to help you make the right call. Are they bluffing? Do they have a killer hand? Should you raise or play it safe and fold? You can use your wits and instincts to make those calls. That important part of the game is lost when playing digitally. Almost every digital poker game will have this issue. It’s not this games fault, but one of the issues with playing a simulation. Maybe a way to change this dynamic would be to add support for the PS4 camera so that you can see your opponents while playing?

Something else I do need to mention is that the game has microtransactions that allow you to buy more credit for the tables if you are not interested in putting in the time to build up those large stockpiles fo chips through actual play. If you don’t purchase chips, it will just take you longer to have enough money to play in the more expensive tables, so you have the option to play as you want.

There are 15 trophies in Pure Hold’em: One Gold, One Silver, and the rest are Bronze. There are not a lot of them, but they are varied so you will need to experience quite a bit of the game to unlock them all. Still, as I usually say, it would have been nice to see a Platinum trophy for this release.

Final Thoughts

This is a really strong digital poker game. The game plays well and is fun. I liked playing against real opponents as they added levels of complexity you don’t quite get from the A.I. The graphics are great and really help to immerse you into this world. At the end of the day, it really comes down to playing the right hands and collecting those hard to get chips, which this game has managed to do perfectly.

[review
pros=”Great Version Of Hold’em
Excellent animations
Great Card Variety” cons=”Can’t see opponents” score=90]

——————
Cost: $19.99

PSN Game size: 971 MB

You can purchase Pure Hold’em from the PSN store

Disclaimer

This review is based on a PS4 copy of Pure Hold’em provided by Ripstone LTD.

————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @the_nmac for more reviews and live streaming from the PS4. Also follow @PS4blog_net and @PS3blogdotnet for updates on PlayStation info and reviews you need.

– You can take care of all your gaming needs at our new Amazon store –