How About That Thing?

Dear reader, I have a bit of a confession to make. I am absolutely, irreversibly, unapologetically, unironically, indefensibly obsessed with poker. At the height of celebrity poker in the mid 2000s, I’d been known to bingewatch entire tournaments, or close enough to it, when there was nothing else on TV. During the COVID-19 lockdown, I passed a lot of my time watching the World Poker Tour channel on Pluto. Hell, I even wrote a book where poker was the central theme.

I’m not here to shill any of my books, though. Let alone this one. I mean I don’t consider it my WORST book I’ve ever written, but I was definitely going through a phase. And in a way, I don’t think I ever truly outgrew that phase.

So, naturally, a guy like me who loves some poker would be all about Poker Night at The Inventory. The fact it has a lot of my favorite characters from favorite franchises was definitely an added bonus.

Unfortunately, the first Poker Night game was never made available to PlayStation3 owners such as myself. And if it had been… Well, what can I say? I missed it, and I regret it.

But then, we get to Poker Night 2.

Ah yes, Poker Night 2. If ever there’s a game I find myself revisiting WAY more often than I probably should, it’s definitely this one.

If you’re familiar with Texas Holdem, then there’s really nothing out of the ordinary, outside of the cast. There’s no strange gimmicks, no absurd motion controls, no weird plotline… Per say. I’ll get to that later, but the point I’m getting to is that this is, for all intents and purposes, a standard Texas holdem game.

And if you don’t like Texas Holdem, then they offer up Omaha holdem as an alternative. And near as I can tell, Omaha holdem is literally the same game, but you get FOUR cards instead of two.

The only thing REALLY weird is the cast.

On the far left is Brock Motherfucking Sampson from The Venture Brothers. I’ll spare you my psychotic fanboy ranting about how awesome The Venture Brothers is, and stick to what I know about him as a poker player. For sure, he’s probably the one good poker player in the entire bunch. Out of the countless amount of poker tournaments I’ve played on this game, it’s amazing how often it comes down to me and Brock. I’ve had one-on-one battles with the other players, but not quite as often as with Brock.

Left of center is Claptrap: the robot from Borderlands. Not going to lie, first person shooters, or really, first person ANYTHING is not my preferred genre of game. However, I do kind of like Claptrap, for what it’s worth. He’s a pretty good poker player… Though a lot of it has more to do with the fact he doesn’t have a face as such, and therefore, you can’t really read his tells in the conventional way.

Right of center is Ash Motherfucking Williams from the original Evil Dead trilogy. Unfortunately, unlike Brock, Claptrap, and others, he’s not voiced by his original actor. I guess Bruce Campbell was in the middle of that Evil Dead reboot that… Some people liked, I guess, but I wasn’t one of them.

Ash is the impulsive poker player. IE, he’s the guy who’ll go all-in with a queen high before the flop. That sort of thing. He may be a deadite’s worst enemy, but he’s unfortunately the easiest player to beat, in my experience.

On the far right is Sam from Sam and Max: Freelance Police. This was probably the easiest license to get, seeing as how Sam and Max have been property of Telltale since Telltale became a thing in the mid-to-late-2000s. Sam is the cautious player. IE, the player who only goes all-in when he knows he has something good, and will usually fold the minute someone raises at any point during the hand. It’s also abundantly clear he has no idea what he’s doing, what with him wondering out loud what he should do, or even occasionally consulting Max.

And, of course, there’s GladOS: the dealer. She’s the misanthropic computer from Portal, who’s taking the night off of experimenting with human lab rats to deal cards.

Some poker games are played for the thrill of the sport. Others are “bounty challenges”, where in one of the opponents offers up a trophy. You win the bounty challenge by winning the tournament. It’s not enough to just beat the guy who holds the trophy anymore. Hell, you’ll beat Brock, for example, but then lose to Sam and Claptrap, and watch as Brock walks back over and takes the trophy off the table.

Each character has a trophy specific to them and their character.

• Brock has “the orb”: a super weapon that could reek untold havoc… If the damn thing wasn’t broken. A classic Venture Bros reference, and one of my favorite gags in the series.
• Claptrap offers up a video games choice award. I guess he won the award in 2012? I don’t know, I feel like offering up some form of ludicrous bazuka would’ve been better, knowing what kind of game franchise Borderlands is.
• Ash offers up the legendary Necronomicon Ex Mortis. IE, the dead book of death, according to a translation program I found back in the day. It definitely makes sense for him to have it… Though Ash himself even seems convinced this is actually a pretty bad idea.
• Sam offers up… A banjo. Okay then. At least it’s not a ukulele, I guess.
• GladOS offers up the conspiracy sphere: a personality core that will occasionally chime in during gameplay to tell you such things as “the world is ruled by a council of thirteen individuals who are all named Steve”, or “there is a hole in Cyberia that leads directly to hell”. My personal favorite is “you were followed here.”

Somehow, in the game, the more you play, the more of an ongoing story with one of the players you end up getting.

• Brock finds himself on a quest to replace all of Dean’s trading cards.
• Ash deals with the revelation that Wendy, his current girlfriend, is actually a demon.
• Sam and Max find themselves on another wacky adventure that goes hard into Lovecraft country.
• Claptrap and GladOS hook up, and apparently, depending on random variables I still haven’t figured out to this day, they either live happily after, or they get sick of each other and break up.

I’ve never been entirely sure how you get one of these stories to initiate, but I’ve gotten Brock, Sam, and the breakup version of Claptrap’s story on my own without really understanding how.

There is a LOT going on in this game. And I think that was one of the things that kept me coming back for more.

The conversations between the opponents are some of my favorite bits in entertainment, and I’ve even quoted a few of Sam’s one-liners in this game in my day-to-day life more than I should probably be proud of admitting out loud.

Thing is, I’m not sure how much non-poker players will get out of this game. It feels casual enough for the inexperienced player to get into, and there’s even an option to buy drinks for the table, get the opponents drunk, and make their tells easier to read. However, aside from some unlockables like new tables, new cards, and new poker chips… Well, what you see is ultimately what you get. It’s a pretty standard poker game through and through.

If you like poker, great. If you don’t like poker… I don’t know.

I, for one, love poker. In However, I think I myself was just as interested in seeing how these characters interacted with one another. Seriously, this right here is the sort of thing I used to see on fanfiction.net all the time, back when I was into fanfiction. The difference, though, is I’m pretty sure a lot of the dialogue in this game actually went through a spellcheck, and WASN’T written by a thirteen-year-old girl who thinks sadism is making a character from Gundam Wing look silly.

Yeah, don’t start me on THAT tangent. We’ll be her all night.

I was hoping for a Poker Night 3 to come out… But then, Telltale went under. And then came back years later. So now I don’t know what to make of the franchise’s future. Maybe there will be a Poker Night 3 some day, or maybe that franchise is as good as done. For what it’s worth, it was fun while it lasted.