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Can Daniel Negreanu’s blessing separate Stacked from numberless alternatives? Poker emerged as a trend that few people could have predicted with a number of TV shows that surprisingly, people actually watched. This, of course, spanned a number of games some of which were obviously better than others. Some simply tried to cash in on the current fad while others took themselves seriously. By working with renowned player Negreanu, Stacked tried to fit in the latter group. Thankfully, the game largely succeeds.
Stacked includes both tournament and cash games. The cash games are relatively low stakes where you’re simply trying to get your wallet a bit thicker. The tournament games are seen as more important and the AI reacts as such, playing a really tight game of Poker. You’ll encounter these types in the game’s career mode where you’ll play many of both types of games as you begin with random casino dwellers before moving on to the pros. You can make your own character in the career mode but don’t expect an EA Sports level of depth as you can only make the most rudimentary changes. If you get tired of playing against the AI, you can take the game online and play against human opponents.
The big draw in Stacked is that the artificial intelligence actually learns how you play and reacts accordingly. This means that it will learn whether you’re a conservative and risky player, being more careful if it thinks you’re careful and being more assertive if it realizes that you’re prone to bluffing. The AI players range from very aggressive all the way to the other extreme, though most players fall somewhere in between. If you try to trick the AI, you’ll only be successful for a short while before you begin to lose all of your chips. This makes the games worthwhile, forcing you to think about your decisions. Should you raise or not? The computer will predict what it thinks you’ll do. Should you play it safe or try to sneak something in? It’s all up to you.
Aside from pure entertainment, Stacked may also make you a better player. The game includes tips from Daniel Negreanu. He’ll give you some in-game hints telling you what you should do in the game, sometimes in great detail. Although he doesn’t always tell you why you should do something, he’s usually right, so you’re well off by following his advice. Aside from these in-game hints, the game includes pretaped educational segments also hosted by Negreanu.
The game’s graphics don’t share the same level of care found in the gameplay but manages to be better than most of its competition. Although the animation is sub par, the character models are fairly detailed. The casinos aren’t very varied and despite this, aren’t very well modeled either. Nonetheless, the interface is intuitive and easy to use which is the primary concern for a game like this. To spice things up, the game does include a number of different camera angles.
Likewise, the game’s audio won’t impress you. The background music is barely there, nothing to really note. There is some dialogue but it comes off as rushed not really adding to the game.
Stacked with Daniel Negreanu succeeds largely because it comes very close to recreating an actual game of poker. The presentation could have used some fine-tuning but the interface is solid enough. Although not perfect, Stacked is about as close as you’re going to get to a real game of Texas hold’em on your PlayStation 2. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Jun 21, 2006
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