It's basically a couple of revolving markers that appear when the computer deems you've made an improper play or when it decides a tell based on your play could be advantageous to other players. The mini-game is WCP2's answer to WPT's emotion system. It's a great way to personalize oneself and improve over the course of time. These skills expand a player's abilities in different ways, like offering better opportunities to capitalize off a bluff / tell mini-game or letting gamers better predict an opponent's hand. For instance, players can improve the following skills: Keen Eyes, Hand Strength, Stare Down, Tough Read, Stone Face, Actor and Convincing. Career play at least introduces some legitimately cool RPG-like customization into the poker playing mix. The career mode also suffers from funneling players into specific types of games, like Razz (every sane human on Earth hates Razz).īut. There are also odd intercontinental locales to play in, but no venue has a real personality, so there's little difference between playing in China and playing in Wisconsin. The idea behind advancing through a poker world and earning money to build a character with skills and items so that he / she can eventually access bigger games is a great one, but the flat world map is not very attractive. The new career mode is also marred by some basic presentation issues. Sometimes giant blocks of color can also be seen on their clothes, which is a clear indication of texturing for the lowest common denominator. The graphics here have also taken a serious hit, and the characters don't feel nearly as expressive or individualized as they did before. This is in stark contrast to WCP and WPT's advanced slider-driven character creation system that let us make all kinds of abnormal freaks, like precious Starfug and Hot Pie, the champion of all things. The new character creation system, for a start, is very limited and allows gamers to make a new player from a preset number of skeletons that can be augmented with snap-ons like wacky hats and designer shirts. WCP2 feels very much like a first outing, in fact there are some basic presentation issues that need to be addressed.