In a nutshell...
No limit Hold ‘Em poker, face-to-face with some of the game’s biggest stars.
What is it good for?
Accumulating a huge pile of (admittedly worthless) chips and bagging the tournament bracelets.
Judgement time…
With poker in the midst of a huge renaissance, it’s no surprise to see N-Gage getting in on the action with this officially-endorsed card ‘em up. With a thumbs-up from the World Series of Poker and a digitally-recreated cast of chip-stacking stars like Mike Mizrachi, Johnny Chan and Shannon Elizabeth, this should be about as close to real card-sharpening Hold ‘Em as you can get without booking a flight to Las Vegas.
Sadly it doesn’t quite work out that way. Anyone expecting large scale knockout face-offs between five or six players is going to be disappointed: here it’s strictly one-on-one, with the player taking on the poker pros one after another. You can do this in one-off match mode, or opt instead for the longer-term career game, which has you qualifying for, then competing in, a short knockout tournament - with the coveted WSOP bracelets the glittering prize for those who bluff and bet their way through.
There’s not even a multiplayer mode, which strikes us as a big missed opportunity given N-Gage Arena’s potential for human versus human match-ups. After all, even the best-programmed pixellated pro is no substitute for a living, breathing opponent.
That’s not to say the game isn’t fun, mind you: we whiled away a couple of hours against the computer-controlled opponents and had a blast, mainly due to the neat little touches like animations. While the old-school sprite visuals lack the 3D polish of most other N-Gage titles, players chuckle when they beat you, bury their head in their hands when they start to feel the pressure and even have “tells” that might reveal when they’re bluffing. It is a bit easy though: we nearly won the tournament on our first ever go, which suggests that the programmers haven’t really managed to replicate the pros’ skills (or maybe we’re just really, really awesome at poker?).
All in all, Pro Challenge is a reasonably diverting game, but we’d been expecting much more from an N-Gage title: if there’s a sequel multiplayer is a must - and more graphical flair wouldn’t go amiss either.