Let's look at the facts concerning Caesar's Palace 2000. It simulates various forms of gambling. Most of which you've never heard of. And there's absolutely no real money involved, no casino atmosphere, no babes on your arm, and no heavies. And thus no feeling of risk. And therefore no excitement.
From these facts, let's make some assumptions. The makers of Caesar's Palace 2000 expect you, dear Playstation owner, to sit gambling your fake money, by playing a number of casino games which you've almost certainly never heard of. Yours, for $25! (That was the price last time I checked.)
It continues to puzzle me how these kind of video games keep getting made. I'm all for the widening of the gaming demographic, and the in-pouring of suitably diverse software. But as Lord Byron probably once said, 'Pap is pap is pap', and CP 2000 is pap of the very purest kind. What we have here, is a variety of casino 'games' (roulette, blackjack and the humble fruit machine) grouped loosely together into a number of categories such as 'card', 'table' and yes, there's even one called 'video game'. Glad to see they bothered to put it in there somewhere.
Unfortunately, the 'video game' category is completely misleading, seeing as all you get are lame versions of video poker, video keno and the ambitiously butchered 'poker challenge'.
The makers seem to have neglected the fact that video games in general are about replicating an experience and motivating players to get more of it. But the entire 'experience' of real life casino games is the thrill and risk of winning or losing real money.
The games themselves are basically super-simplistic and (worse) chance-dependent devices which decide whether you make or break your cash.
CP 2000 takes all the fun out of the proceedings by bringing you these ludicrously plain games and removing the real life risk. Conceivably, the best you could do in the game would be to take your two grand, play for 20 hours and work it up to a couple of million. But then what? Go tell your mates that you've won billions at the casino? I'm sure they'll be impressed. Tell them it's sitting in the little Playstation bank in the sky.
So the crucial fact is that CP 2000 is a waste of time. Astonishingly, there are even flaws in the conversions of some of the casino games. The included blackjack game, probably people's best chance at gaining actual enjoyment, is inexplicably slow to respond and keeps wanting to load every five seconds. Considering there are wildly complex action-adventures like Metal Gear Solid where you barely notice any load times, the fact that you're kept waiting for the next round of a game of blackjack is frankly an affront.
But there's more. God, there's more. Thanks to the crap zoom effect of the polygons, you can't even see what cards anyone has until the camera chooses to swoop dramatically down two inches from the table - making you wait even longer. Why, WHY?!
It all adds up to a terrifying bad slice of video gaming. It's not even bad in a camp, Ed Wood kind of way. It's just bad, genuinely deathly boring bad. The fact that CP 2000 is about, if not the, only casino game on Playstation means I'm giving it a solitary mark to warn off those on the lunatic fringe who might be considering it.
An utterly pointless and futile exercise, and more to the point, a complete black hole of fun. Just take your money and spend it on the real thing. At least that way you might actually win some money and enjoy the thrill of the real thing that is so lacking in this adaption.
Review by Smirnoff - Posted for GameFAQ's
22-10-2002
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