"Rated M" Month: Sexy Poker

Hello my fellow perverts! This is Nicolas, and I’m back again for our famous segment! You see, the other day I was reading an old Summum from my personal stash. I’ve said it previously, I’ll say it again for the new readers, Summum is basically Quebec’s answer to Playboy, so they’ve got excellent articles to read between full-page pictures of almost-naked ladies. As a fan of good journalism, and as an admirer of the female figure, I heartily approve of this. Anyway, I stumbled on an article about famous Quebec poker player Jonathan Duhamel, who won the main event at the 2010 World Series of Poker. This got me thinking… I rarely ever play card games, so I’ve never played poker with friends. For some reason, the article made me want to try something like it. But how to play poker… I mean, I already had a little poker game for my Nintendo DS, though it was part of a collection of games. But that was not enough. Especially not for my dirty brain. Therefore, I looked around and found a little game on the Wii Shop Channel called Sexy Poker. Sounds right up my alley. And 500 points? 5 dollars? Not bad for a little game.

For those who cannot guess from the title, Sexy Poker is basically a strip poker game on the Wii. You’ll tell me a game like this has no reason to be on a console aimed at children, but then again there’s been a Grand Theft Auto game on the Nintendo DS, and the Wii has the No More Heroes series, MadWorld and a few other M-rated title. Obviously, Sexy Poker is also rated M. It does remind of the skewered priorities of American censors, though; we have no problem subjecting kids to heads cut off, Mexican stand-offs and random acts of ultraviolence, but you better hide that breast! We’re a lot more lax about those things in Canada; Hell, the Deadpool movie was rated 13+ in Quebec rather than R! And it has a pegging scene, for Christ’s sake!

So yeah, a strip poker game on the Wii. Obviously you’re not the one to strip, the ladies on the screen do. Oh, did I mention that these ladies are drawn? Yeah. You have the choice between six different women, each in the middle of their occupation – whichever it is, as long as it corresponds to some person’s fetish, like a nurse or a cop. When they bet an item of clothing, a sum of money gets added to their “account”, and when you take all that money from them by beating their hands, they take off an item and bet another one. Sounds simple, right? I mean, granted, this makes the game much longer than a real strip poker game, not that I’ve ever been invited to one. Or maybe I have, only I know. I’m not telling you that.

However, there IS a thing to take into consideration: If you lose your money and it goes back in the woman’s pockets, she may regain items of clothing she had removed previously. The only way to win each “level” is to end with the girl almost nude, the only way to lose is to waste all your money.

Oh, I can’t wait to give myself some alone time to these animated ladies in the nude. Come to think of it, my Wii is located in the living room. There are many windows in that room. I would hate to be seen by the outside world in the middle of a private time… oh well, guess I just won’t get down to this in the living room. Not that it’s much of a loss, I can probably find pictures online much better than the ones this game contains.

The game has six choice ladies, each with a difficulty level from 1 to 3 stars. I don’t think the difficulty level means anything outside of, perhaps, how smart the AI is in their decisions when it comes to betting, but it’s still there. We’ve got Sakura the nurse, Eli the private professor (I guess?), Yui the policewoman, Misaki the race car enthusiast, Mika the beach volleyball player, and Ryoko the… accountant? Oh yes, divide me those numbers, calculate me this. Let me fill your tax report. Oh yes, oh yes, oh YES. Take off those sweet glasses, aw yeah. Use your calculator! No, wait, not like that! Ow! No… Ow! wait, yes, continue! Ow! Anyway, I’m not one for fetishes based on profession, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

These six fine ladies will challenge you at a card game, but you choose which one: It’s either Texas Hold’em, or Black Jack. In Texas Hold’em, two cards are dealt to both players. After they choose to either bet or call, a series of three cards (“the flop”) is shown to the players. After you’ve placed a bet or checked/called, a fourth card gets revealed, “the turn”. Once again the players do their turn, and a fifth and final card is placed, “the river”. A final turn, and the hands are revealed, with the best hand winning the pot. It all depends on your hand and the cards revealed; got a pair? Two pairs? A three of a kind? There’s also the psychological factor to take into consideration, but how much of it goes into a game against an AI is debatable. Also, when you decide to place a bet, you can choose to add a sum of 10$, 25$, 50$ or 100$ to the pot, and the woman you’re playing against can also choose any of those options.

Black Jack follows the same rules as the game, except each round you bet 10$, 20$ or 40$ before you start being dealt cards. Two cards are dealt to you and to the lady, with one of the lady’s cards hidden. You can ask for another card and try to get as close to 21 as possible, without going over 21. After you’re done asking for cards, the lady reveals her card and may ask to be dealt more cards as well, and whoever has 21 or is closest to it (without going over 21) wins. And thus the rounds come and go, and you try to win the woman’s money. Shame it’s all fake money, I could use those few hundred bucks.

Oh yes, look at me with this disapprobation in your eyes.
Yes, I like to be told that I'm doing something wrong.

Whenever the animated woman loses her money to you, she refills her account by betting an article of clothing. When she loses all that money, off goes the article! And so she bets another article, and this repeats three more times until the lady is in the nude, in the exact same position you saw her in when she was clothed. What, you were expecting the striptease to be animated? Nope, you perverted mind. No sexy animation for you! The clothes magically disappear off the woman. Gee, talk about cheap. She doesn’t even change position or anything, the picture stays still. You know, I don’t think that’s what the teleportation technology was meant for. I doubt the engineers of the Star Trek universe, when designing teleportation technology, thought to themselves “This will be excellent to take the clothes off women”.

To be honest, between the two modes I largely prefer Texas Hold’em, because I tend to be luckier at it. It’s also simpler to deduce the woman’s hand power based on her actions; if she bets a lot of money, you can tell she has a good hand.

Well, I guess it’s time to play now. Let’s go against… uh… Nurse Sakura with Texas Hold’em! Alright! There goes. Take off that nurse hat! And now, off with the nylon stockings! Goodbye shoes! And now, see ya later, one-piece nurse uniform!

…wait, is that it? I’ve won! Hurray! …Wait a second… She’s still in her bra and panties. Yet I’ve won. I demand that you strip! What? You won’t? Goddammit! That’s it? That’s just it? Goddamn cocktease! Is it the same for Eli? …Yes! Yui, Misaki, Mika? Yes, yes, yes! Fuck! Even Ryoko? Goddamn it, yes! Women, this thing is called STRIP poker. There isn’t supposed to be any pieces of clothing left on you! I mean, I know the Wii is a system for kids, I’m too broke for an Xbox One and whatever adult games that console might have.

Hell, the ladies in their undergarments are on the logo of the freaking game. You don’t have to play the game, they already spoil for you the fact that these women won’t completely strip! I mean, come on! What a load of bullshit. I mean, there IS a Gallery Mode to see all the ladies and the clothes slowly vanishing off them… which is still useless. This just sucks. If I wanna see bikini-clad women, I’ll go to the beach, thank you very much! (Though those will be real, so I’ll treat them with respect.)

See? They ARE on the logo!

Guess I’ll have to rely on the Internet once again instead of trying to find a video game that will help me evacuate my pent-up stress.  Because this… was utterly pointless. A waste of time, plain and simple. Oh, and a waste of money, too.

It’s all just a poor attempt at putting some alluring pictures to a card game. And as a result, there is nothing to keep one’s interest in the game, outside perhaps of those who wish to keep playing to get a high score. This WiiWare title is just not worth it. I mean, the pictures are pretty and all, and Gameloft even went through the trouble of hiring voice actresses for the six ladies you play against – and at least you can tell they’re not all the same woman – and giving the women mostly realistic proportions. The pictures are very detailed, too, I’ll give them that.  It’s not that they have many lines anyway, since much of what they’ll say is “I raise”, “I pass”, “I fold”, and anything else they’ll say will be written text on the screen…

The game itself works fine, though only two different games to choose from is not a wide enough selection. The game does follow pretty well the rules of Texas Hold’em and Black Jack. Obviously, luck factors in quite a bit in both games, which means you also need rely on strategy to get you through each hand… and through the animated girl’s clothes. I could say that only six opponents to choose from is not enough, but for a game like this, I’d say it’s just alright. It’s not like there’s much to see anyway…

The options include the regular stuff like raising, lowering the volume, and three different card decks, one which has a silhouette of a woman, the other has a penguin. Penguins, for some weird reason… Is that supposed to mean something? The Gallery mode is utterly pointless, since it updates to show all the steps you’ve reached with an opponent, and of course ends where the woman stops stripping. You just press A to have each item disappear. And when you reach the end? There is no Back button, you have to press B repeatedly. What a pointless, pointless mode.

Another problem with this game is that there is no Tutorial to help you know how each game works. You’re not told the rules, you’re not told which hands are better than others (though you can figure it out with some guesswork). You’re not told a damned thing. The game assumes that you know. And for someone like me, who’s pretty clearly a newbie at those two games, it’s quite annoying. You know what? Don’t buy this game. For the card game, go play poker with real people. For the alluring pictures, just watch porn. This game doesn’t even qualify to be “poor man’s porn”. This is little more than a little Adult-rated Newgrounds game. Don’t waste 5$ on this.

Well, this was the first review of “Rated M” Month. I’m so glad to be done with this cheap April Fools review… alright, well, tune in next week for my review of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. This is gonna be a long review…