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Poker Night 2
XBLA
From the developers that brought us one of
the most critically acclaimed games of 2012 The Walking Dead,
come their next installment, Poker Night 2. Unlike the strenuous
nerve racking experience of the aforementioned game, Poker Night 2
harkens back to the old PC Poker days of yesterday and if you're old
enough, you may remember that quite a few games by Sierra Entertainment
featured some of their classic video game characters in similar gambling
situations. Poker Night 2 supports a similar premise and Telltale
Games have included a variety of popular characters in their current
game such as Ash Williams (The Evil Dead) and GLaDOS (Portal) to add
some humour into their poker title.
Available via XBLA, Poker Night 2 is
a virtual poker game with the goal of the game to out win all the other
poker players. Unfortunately Poker is all about odds and bluffing and as
the game uses virtual currency, a considerable amount of the danger
element is removed. Not that we're condoning real-life gambling but when
you're gambling with your own money, things definitely become more nerve
racking. The game also boasts two versions of poker, Texas Hold 'Em and
Omaha.
However Poker Night 2 is all about the
characters that you play and Telltale Games have included a healthy
amount of humour and some very amusing cutscenes to liven up the game of
poker. Joining the player in their round of poker is the aforementioned
Ash Williams (voiced by Bruce Campbell), Brock Samson from The Venture
Bros (Patrick Warburton), Sam (David Nowlin) from Sam & Max and finally
ClapTrap (David Eddings) from Borderlands 2. GLaDOS (Ellen McLain) from
Portal 2 acts as a mediator in the title and is priceless!
These characters provide some great
entertainment to the title, especially with their witty banter. It's
actually bizarre to be playing poker with the evil GLaDOS computer
entity from Portal making quite nasty comments and seeing some of the
expressions of your co-players is hilarious. These are just the main
characters in Poker Night 2 and without spoiling the full list, there
are a couple of other surprises from other franchises.
As you play through the various rounds of
Poker in either Texas Hold 'Em or Omaha, you will accumulate cash which
can be used to purchase additional content for the game such as new
decks and other fun elements. As players become eliminated, they return
to the bar to be served by one of the coolest characters from
Borderlands.
The star of Poker Night 2 is GLaDOS, the
computer psychopath from Portal who has some great one-liners and
is truly mad. Although multiplayer is not available, there are some
online leader boards which is great for those competitive types and
hopefully Telltale Games will release additional DLC characters in the
future and perhaps multiplayer which would definitely liven things up in
an overall relatively static game. For fans of Borderlands, if you
purchase this game, your Borderlands 2 characters gets access to new
skins which is quite cool.
Graphics/Audio
Graphically, Poker Night 2 looks
like a treat on the XBox 360 with all the characters mimicking their
franchises perfectly, especially Ash Williams and GLaDOS. With such
great looking character models, the only let down with the graphics is
the backgrounds and hopefully we will see some additional environments
in the future. Nonetheless it is still a great looking XBLA game. Of
course the highlight of the game are actors who once again lend their
voices to these very memorable characters but as with the backgrounds,
the one-liners and banter does become a tad too repetitive, especially
if you play this title continuously.
Final Thoughts?
Poker Night 2 is a fun game to gamers who enjoy the odd round of
poker but unfortunately the title is a one-trick pony. You'll get some
great laughs out of the game but this will wear thin as you progress
through round after round. Thankfully it's quite affordably priced at
800 Microsoft Points and hopefully Telltale Games will continue
releasing additional characters and hopefully the inclusion of
multiplayer.
Poker Night 2 is fun but a tad repetitive,
especially once everything is unlocked.
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