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Too little, too late.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 15 / 15
Date: June 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

You'd think with a player like Daniel Negreanu and the hype behind this title for more than a year, Stacked should deliver a full house of features, but the game arrived after countless development delays and there isn't much to get excited about.

GRAPHICS & AUDIO

To begin, the audio is uneven (loud in the menus and very soft in the game) and the graphics are just ho-hum. Granted, this isn't a next-gen title and we're only talking about poker here, which is not supposed to have spellbinding audio or be a graphics-intensive genre anyways. But a simple example is that the player's hole cards are always shown askew, which makes them inherently jaggy (Note to the programmers: The point of poker is to look at your cards!!! The least you could do is make them easy on our eyes!). Going beyond that, the player customization is horrific. And by that, I mean you won't be able to make an avatar that looks like you, but instead you'll have to choose from one of 18 characters (6 are women) and change the few features they offer in an attempt to make a horrifically scary version of yourself. To put it kindly, if you even get close, it will look like you were cloned... But at Wal-mart.

GENERAL GAME DYNAMICS

Once you make your character and get into the game, the frustration begins. The AI on this game is ridiculous. Whereas other poker titles tend to overplay bad hands, almost all of the Stacked players will slow play everything, giving you absolutely no idea what the players may have. They'll smooth call your bets without coming over the top on you and turn over the nuts more often than you can believe. And, what's worse, they'll call all-in bets with ridiculous hands and suck-out more times than an 18 year old on PartyPoker.

When you get right down to it, the basic premise of the game is what makes this so boring. Stacked is designed with a very specific "path to success." You must place (often top 10% or a win) in specific tournaments to unlock subsequent levels and challenges. Although I think this is an interesting premise when applied to a few games (like satellites that let you win your way into a bigger tournament) the game should have relied on amassing cash to pay for tournament entries. That way, a player can pick the tables they want to play at and earn enough to go after the championships as they choose, rather than being forced to play limit games and be at the mercy of the inevitable suck out.

LEVEL DESIGN & CHARACTERS

What's more, all this work is for mediocre gains. There are only 7 professionals (Daniel Negreanu, Evelyn Ng, Erick Lindgren, Jennifer Harman, David Williams, Josh Arieh, and Juan Carlos Mortensen) to unlock and only 3 locales (and that's only three if you count the Stratosphere Casino and the Stratosphere Tower as two separate locations, which Stacked does). Seriously, if the pinnacle of my poker career is playing at the Stratosphere, kill me now.

UNIQUE GAME CHARACTERISTICS

Although Daniel Negreanu might be considered the unique benefit in the game, his presence isn't that pivotal. As you play, you can ask for his opinion on each hand. Most of the time, his suggestions are as bland as "I'd check," or "Call it, dude!" but beginning players (who would most often use this feature) won't understand why he's instructing you to make these moves, or what could happen on the flop to improve the hand he's asking you to play. Some exceptions are when he tells you to steal the blinds with a hand like KJ off suit, or when he says to re-raise with a pretty good hand if you don't think the limpers before you are holding the nuts. But the advice that he gives should have been integrated with the 15 chapters of videos he provides in the "Stacked Poker School." After all, if when playing poker against bots, you should be able to take a moment and brush-up on the tactics you should be using, in order to properly employ them.

POSITIVE ASPECTS

For everything that it lacks, there are some redeeming and unique features in Stacked that could warrant a sequel. The game graphically represents your chips as a stack in on the left side of the screen. When you call or raise, you can see exactly how much of your stack you're committing to the pot. In single-player games you can display your hole cards at all times but, when you play online, you have to "look" at your cards, an action which all the other players can see.

When you call a bet or raise, the game shows you the portion of your total chip stack you are committing to the pot.

SUMMARY

Pros:

- Worthy attempts to be innovative with the poker interface

Cons:

- Lackluster casino locales
- Dreadful character customization
- Terrible AI
- Audio problems and mediocre graphics

When you get right down to it, Stacked is nothing more than a slight diversion for the few months you'll have to wait until the next-gen poker titles arrive. Once the poker titles for the latest consoles arrive, this title won't be able to "Stack up" against them.

This is a generous 2 stars

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: June 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

OK, all those people who were playing on WSOP on Xbox live that said this game would blow WSOP away, you stole 30 bucks and 2 1/2 hours of my life and I want them back. This game both sucks and blows at the same time. I can't believe MTV did what was basically a 30 minute infomercial for this game. The online play which was pretty good on WSOP but needed some improvement (particularly in the tracking of your career earnings) was one of the better aspects of that game. It also has pretty good career mode with a great create a character mode.

Stacked has Daniel Negreanu telling me to fold Ace,10 off suit because somebody raised me 10 bucks. Hey Daniel, I know you're Canadien and might not know the exchange rate but 10 bucks aint much even in real money. the online play sucks to put it mildly. You frequently get booted from sessions, your money gets lost every time you get a decent little stack going. The graphics are mediocre, create a character stinks, lousy variety(or lack there of) of places/casinos to play, lousy AI. I could go on but do I need to? Just don't buy it.

The statistics show...I'm always right.
Showtime Out

Best Hold'em Game Yet!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The game is very realistic, and actually challenging unlike most other poker games that I have played. The characters are fun and have personality. If I have anything negative to say is that it is a little slow, but you have the option to speed up the hands that you are sitting out of.

CHEAT!!!!!!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Twice I have been leading in a tournament in this game and it has frozen up on me. I can't see how one can win when it does that.

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