Welcome back all my fine chums and lasses for tonight (or morning depending on when you’re reading this review) I am looking at the sequel to Telltale Games’ Poker Night at The Inventory, a crossover poker game released in 2010 and staring famous video game and cartoon characters from across the web and consoles. First time around we had Tycho from the Penny Arcade webcomic, Max from Sam & Max, the Heavy from Team Fortress 2, and Strong Bad from Homestar Runner. Unfortunately, I never played the first game
but if its like anything in this game I’m sure I would have loved it because Telltale Games’ Poker Night 2 has been one of the funniest games I’ve played in a while.
Here’s the context you’re the silent Player arriving at The Inventory, an underground secret club built under a video game warehouse and while booting up the game the first time you begin to meet your competition. First is the big ball busting behemoth himself Brock Samson from the Venture Bros., you walk downstairs to meet the owner of the Inventory Captain Reginald Van Winslow from Tales of Monkey Island reprising his role from the last game, then the rest of your competition arrives Max accompanied by Sam from Sam & Max, Claptrap from Borderlands, Ash Williams from The Evil Dead and the dealer the one and only GlaDOS from Portal.
Just by the paragraph you can tell this game is chalked filled with references to loads of games and it even does clever call backs to the original without it coming off as cheesy or forced. But references are one thing, but the writing on the other hand is just brilliant all around. The voices of all these characters were just pitch perfect. The best part of this game isn’t the actual game itself, it’s just watching as these four characters and sometimes GlaDOS just talk amongst each other. Sometimes talking about their past adventures, their weird quirks or about how quiet you are. It’s like that episode of Batman The Animated where all of Batman’s villains are just hanging out playing poker just chatting. In both of these scenarios you get a very personal connection as you are right up in their faces in a very relaxing environment, allowing these characters to just let loose and show how insane they can be on their off time.
But I can’t just talk about the writing I have to at last talk a little about the game mechanics. Poker Night 2 has two card games, Hold’em and Omaha. The games are just Hold’em and Omaha so there really isn’t any point in me explaining them, especially because I’m still very much a noob when it comes to it. But there are some game mechanics that are latched onto the games themselves. Drinks and Bounties. After winning a game of either Hold’em or Omaha you will receive Inventory tokens that can be used to buy new tokens, cards, and venues but they can also be used to buy drinks for your fellow contestants. The pro of doing this is the contestant who has that drink will have more obvious tells. But honestly I gave a few of the contestants drinks but I never really noticed any change in the probability of seeing their tell. Their tells were always fairly obvious to see.
Then there are the bounties. Each tournament you’ll be given three bounty objectives like “Steal a Pot” and when you complete all three objectives the next tournament you play for one of the contestants’ bounties. And this is the crux of the “Loot” selling point for the game with each bounty you win some Xbox Avatar Items and some Borderlands 2 stuff. I, myself, don’t really care about that stuff but it is a good incentive and the rewards are pretty cool.
But now we have to delph into the cons, and it is directly rooted to the games greatest pro, the writing. While the writing and humor of the game is pitch perfect and hilarious to boot the game has a tendency to loop its dialogue. In my 8 hour play through I listened to Brock tell the same alien invasion trading card story 5 times in the span of just 4 games. So, the probability to get new dialogue is few and far between once you play just a few rounds of it. Don’t mistake me the writing is top notch but after a while of hearing it repeat it starts to lose the appeal.
Also, in my play through on the XBLA version of Poker Night 2 was plagued with some character model glitches where they would just jolt into new character movement and I fell victim to TWO game crashing glitches. I have no idea what caused it but that just shows that at least the XBLA has a few bugs that need ironing out.
Poker Night 2 was a surprise to me. Coming into this blind I didn’t expect to like a single player video poker game but thanks to the great writing and aesthetics of The Inventory it got me to stick with it for +8 hours. If you want to over simplify it the game is pretty bare bones with only two game modes and its only real staying feature is the prospect of getting loot. For gamers like me, I really don’t care for loot so that’s not what made me stay. Just playing a quiet game of poker, listening to four funny characters banter amongst one another was definitely worth the 800 Microsoft points investment. If you like virtual poker, or don’t mind just a single player game, this is definitely a game that you should play.
SCORE: 8 OUT OF 10
Taylor Wyatt is a 24-year-old writer and producer. He has gone through the Toronto Film School for TV and Film Writing to develop his production and writing skills, implementing them into several independent film projects, music videos, and short film anthologies. He is also the co-owner of the online production company ToonGrin.com and the host of the animated review show Cartoon Corner.
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