Texas Hold'Em Poker 2

There was a time, believe it or not, when I didn't play poker games on my mobile.

It was a much more innocent, simpler time, when I also didn't lose countless hours of sleep fretting over the non-existent money I'd frittered away to fictitious characters the previous day.

Such is the abundance of poker titles on mobile that standing out from the crowd is somewhat difficult.

Most recently, Hands-On Mobile's World Poker Tour: Hold 'Em Showdown proved that it's perfectly possible to carve out some space by serving up both simplicity in its controls and a sense of personality when it came to its characters.

Though there are far worse poker sims than Texas Hold'Em Poker 2, on both of those scores Gameloft's equivalent falls short.

In essence, it's all a bit of mess. The matches themselves – available both as one-off challenges and part of a series of tournaments that includes venues such as in London, Paris, Monaco, Dubai, Macau, Moscow, Bahamas, and Las Vegas – are standard, no nonsense affairs.

With both Texas Hold'Em and Omaha Hold'Em up for grabs, play is viewed from above, with characters given back stories and nicknames in an attempt to imbue them with some sense of personality.

The problem is, when the pressure is on most tend to act in the same way: they fold.

Whatever level you play at, most games are over as soon as you start to raise the bets beyond $20 or so.

Nine times out of ten, every single player will give up as soon as things get heated. Those that do have the guts to carry on do so alone, making the few games that go the distance one-on-one affairs.

It almost sounds like an intentional simplification of the game, but if that's the case it's vastly out of step with the rest of the package.

Rather than aiding newcomers, the leagues of help files – available as a separate 'classroom' option, or in play via on-screen commentary – littered throughout the game do far more to confuse than enlighten.

In truth, the text included could easy have been lifted directly from a poker fanzine.

In all, Texas Hold'Em Poker 2 suffers from a lack of direction. It's not terrible by any means, but the hand it holds is so mixed that it's hard to view it as anything other than an also-ran – full of balls and bluster to begin with, but all too eager to flop and fold when the game actually gets going.