Great Writing, Okay Poker, Repetitive Dialogue
Poker Night 2 is Telltale's sequel to the weird and fun, if a bit barebones, surprise PC title Poker Night At The Inventory, a game that brought together a smattering of characters from various video game related franchises to play some poker with the player, celebrity poker style, and offered a number of Team Fortress 2 items as rewards for doing well. While this sequel changes up the roster, it also manages to build on the original in almost every way, though the removal of a few features is somewhat questionable, and the dialogue simply repeats far too often.
Who's Who
This time around, players are going up against Brock Samson, of the Adult Swim cartoon The Venture Bros, Claptrap from the Borderlands franchise, Ash Williams of the Evil Dead and Army of Darkness films, and Sam the dog of Sam and Max fame. Though the first game's host is still present, GLaDOS, of Portal, has taken over dealing the cards this time around, and is far more talkative than he ever was.
The banter between everyone as the card games progress is pretty entertaining, some of it's even great, and you don't need to be familiar with the franchises involved to get a lot of the humor here. But the game's removal of a 'chatter frequency' setting seems really strange, and unfortunately means you're going to be hearing a lot of the same lines over and over and over. This wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for some dialogue(mostly from Claptrap and Glados) taking far, far too long for how often it comes up. I can honestly say I've heard the phrase "Great Day in the Morning!" so often that if it ever had any meaning, it would have lost all meaning.
Additionally, the characters each have a number of visual tells, cluing you in to what might be going on with their hands or betting behavior. In that sense, this isn't a traditional by-the-numbers poker game. Being observant, realizing what it means when Brock scratches his neck after going all-in, or that Ash's robotic hand tends to tap the table when he's bluffing, can make all the difference in the world. It lends a sort of puzzle element to the game, where the player can get better at playing over time not just by knowing poker better, but by knowing the characters inside and out. And, of course, you can buy drinks for everyone to loosen them up and get their tells to trigger more often.
The Reason You're Buying It
And, of course, there are the cross-game unlocks. On every platform, players can earn new cosmetic items for Borderlands 2, but each system has some unique rewards as well. On PC and Mac, players get a number of TF2 items. On Xbox 360, a number of avatar objects can be unlocked. And on the PS3, players can earn a series of crossover-driven dynamic themes for their dashboard. All of these are nice, and considering the game only costs $5, it could be said that it practically pays for itself, even if you don't necessarily like the game... but really want those TF2 hats.
The system for earning this stuff is much easier to deal with than in the first game, requiring players to complete a series of gradually-escalating challenges, after which they'll get a chance to win one of the offered prizes by winning another game of poker. Once all the table denizens have anted up and lost their belongings to the player, though, there's not much to do. While the game has some ongoing "come back tomorrow and you'll hear the next part of this" storylines that develop between playsessions(seriously- you have to stop playing and resume the next day to hear the next segment of these), the banter will begin to wear thin rather quickly once you've heard a little over half of what the game has to offer. There doesn't seem to be any sort of system in place to stop the game from repeating lines you've already heard, which gets tiring, and is something that Telltale should have fixed for their second installment of this series.
Poker Night 2 has some problems once you scratch deeper than the surface, but still, for $5 it's a great few hours of entertainment, and I heartily recommend picking it up. If only to hear the amazing jazz covers of songs from the franchises involved.