Poker Night 2 features unrelated characters playing poker. You have: Brock from Venture Bros (cartoon); Ash Army of Darkness (film); Claptrap from Borderlands (game); Sam from Sam & Max (game) plus Max is there in the background; Glados from Portal (game) as the dealer; and Reginald Van Winslow from Tales of Monkey Island (game) as the host. It’s a crazy combination but it works, since all the characters have bags of personality.
There’s loads of dialogue, but you can’t seem to tone it down like in the first one which is incredibly bizarre to remove. This will be a deal-breaker for many. After around 3.5 hours, you have probably heard all the dialogue and then the games become tiresome.
The dialogue is really funny and a large part of the experience. Glados is brutal with her insults, Claptrap is hilarious, Sam is chilled but witty, Brock tries to keep his anger in check. If you want a proper Poker game then you may find this a bit annoying.
The buy-in has doubled from the first game so is now $20,000. You can lose your money really quick because the AI often likes to bet high.
There’s now 2 types of Poker but they are very similar. “Texas Hold Em” and “Omaha”. In Texas Hold Em, you are drawn 2 cards, and have a pool of 5 cards which all players use. In Omaha, you are given 5 cards but only can use 2 of them. You don’t have to manually pick them, your best hand is calculated for you. You just have to recognise it to decide whether to fold or play and how aggressive you want to raise the bets.
You are given a few random challenges to aim for, which then gives you the opportunity to win the items for Borderlands 2 and Team Fortress 2.
By finishing each game, you can win tokens which can be spent on drinks for the other players, or to unlock new chips, tables, backgrounds. Buying drinks apparently highlights the players “tells” more; so you can determine whether they are bluffing or have a strong hand.
I couldn’t see the scoring listed in the help section...but it turns out you can click an arrow on the left of the screen. Why isn’t it listed in the same section as the rest of the help text?
Poker Night 2 has better graphics, better dialogue and an extra variation so is an improvement over the original game. However, due to the fact you can’t tone down the frequency of the dialogue, it slows down the pacing of each game, and lowers the replay value.