Poker Night At The Inventory/Poker Night 2

I never really got into the whole "Texas hold-em" craze that swept the nation some years ago.  I watched Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo a couple of times just to see things like the cast of The West Wing duke it out for charity, and I played in one match with a friend of mine and people he knew (which gave me a new rule, never play cards when three of the players are in the same family).

But I haven't really watched any tournaments online, and I don't have any poker-style electronic games, outside of the occasional hand during some down time in Red Dead Redemption.

But then Telltale Games had to go and ruin the whole thing with their Poker Night At The Inventory games, a pair of games I regularly pop open and play when I just want to pit my minds against some notable characters from games, movies, comics, web series, and cartoons.

The concept is simple, take characters from various sources, script out some lines so they talk to each other at random moments, and let you, "The Player" try to take their money or other collateral they put up on the table.

In the first game, you had Max from the Sam and Max series of comics and video games (and a brief, cancelled too soon cartoon show), Strongbad from the always enjoyable Homestar Runner dot com, the Heavy from Team Fortress 2, and Tycho Brahe from Penny Arcade.

Now, Tycho had never been voiced before, so they had to bring in a new voice actor for him, but all of the other characters (including the host, who appeared in the Tales of Monkey Island games) kept their original voices from their source materials.

The game play was basic enough, you had two cards, you chose whether to fold, call, or raise, and you quickly watched your money go away because you have no idea what you're doing.

Or, at least, that's how it happened to me.

But you don't play a poker game for new and exciting game play features (ironically, they added more features in the sequel, more on that later), you play for the characters.  Every character has a distinct, true to their source personality, and their interactions show their opinions of each other.  Tycho likes The Heavy, isn't that fond of Strong Bad.  Heavy likes Strong Bad.  Max likes everybody, but he's also nuts and tends to creep them out.

There's also a lot of "meta" play, in instances where Strong Bad and Tycho know they're in a video game, but The Heavy doesn't, and talks about his constant deaths and respawns as "dreams" that creep everybody else out.  They have different ways of taunting you, The Player, based on how you're doing.  Keep folding, and they'll pick up on that.  Play every single hand, and they'll start to advise you to have a bit more sense.

The game is still fun, but I can repeat some of the conversations to myself by heart now, though every now and again I'll discover one I hadn't seen before.

Then came the sequel, Poker Night 2.

Right there you have Brock Samson from The Venture Brothers, Claptrap from the Borderlands games (with Mad Moxxi in the background tending bar, naturally), Ash from Evil Dead/Army of Darkness, and Sam from the Sam and Max franchise.  Sadly, they didn't get Bruce Campbell to voice Ash (boo!) but the guy who does, Danny Webber, does a rather respectable job.

Oh, and there's your dealer, GLaDOS.  Seriously.  Because who better to make sure there's no cheating than a machine that wants everyone dead equally?

The dialogue is fleshed out a lot more in this version, with different conversations based on who remains at the table.  Characters react more when players are eliminated quickly or if everybody stays at the table longer.  GLaDOS regularly insults your playing style while fending off romantic advances from Claptrap.

Oh, and you can order the other characters drinks to make their tells more visible.

One thing that is extremely neat, though, and to be honest I haven't tried this trick in the first game yet, is that if you change the setting to one of the character-specific locations, the dialogue completely changes to fit it.  Play on Pandora, and Ash and Brock mock Claptrap with questions based on Avatar.  Play in Sam's film noir-style location, and the conversation follows suit.

If you haven't played either one, I recommend picking them both up.  The play is simpler in the first one, but again, you don't play poker for the complex game mechanics, you play to pull up a chair to a table, have a cold drink, and listen to the conversations.