Stacked Review (part 1)

I recently came into possession of a copy of the new Daniel Negreanu poker game, Stacked. Being the good fellow I am, I'm passing along my initial thoughts. It has nothing to do with moving the post below down a notch...

Overall, the game is very good. By far the best poker game I've played. And I've played a few. It has it's annoyances (the interface, the speed of the game) and it's drawbacks (the Pro Player tips from Negreanu are weak), the game play, and the variety of games offered (cash, tourneys, on line, LAN) and the AI are solid.

It took me a while to figure out how to use the interface, and there is no help available that I can find. But once I did, I found it easy to use. The only real beef I have is that the game window is very small on my laptop.

I entered a tournament first thing, and immediately found that the game was much more interesting than the other PC games. Instead of playing against faceless (and avatar-less) names, you have (real) people who have real expressions and mannerisms. They even talk (although it gets redundant). For whatever reason, all the women are large breasted and wearing very revealing clothing. Just like the MPT - if we had women players.

My biggest question was: Is the AI going to be any good? I've played DD Poker Tournament edition a great deal, and frankly the AI is so annoying it almost is not worth playing. So I was pleasantly surprised when people were betting rationally, instead of acting like it's a freeplay on PokerStars. I did notice that people started reacting to my style, and I had to adjust. That's a huge improvement from the other poker games I played.

I won't be able to say definitively how good it is until I advance through the levels. Keep in mind that this is a video game about poker, not a poker game on the PC. What I mean is, this is aimed at the MTV younger crowd. It's about winning tournaments to 'unlock' new levels and pro players (like Evelyn Ng and Josh Arieh).

This is not for the hard core poker player to test his skills on (and really if they were looking to do that, they'd be playing at Full Tilt anyway right?). This is for someone who likes poker to have some fun. Honestly, I highly recommend this game.

I have high hopes for the LAN and public forum play, but have not yet been able to test that part out. I'll post more once I get a chance to test that out.