Poker Night at the Inventory Review
Summary: Skunkape Games have remastered and re-listed Poker Night, given it a fresh lick of paint, reintroduced it's most important feature and all that at a decent price. They've truly gone all-in.
4.8
Full House!
The Inventory has been renovated!
7 years after closing up shop, never to be seen again, and almost 16 years since its original release – The Inventory is opening its doors again to welcome faces old and new, for a night of Poker amongst familiar faces. Maybe you have no idea who these buffoons are.
Poker Night at the Inventory was an experimental, fun little title released by Telltale Games in 2010, gathering 4 different Internet personalities from its era around for a night of Poker, with the stakes running high, the banter as witty and sharp as their serieses (or series’, depending on your preference), and The Player (you and me) hopefully walking away with a prize. After being delisted and missed by many, Skunkape Games (developers of the Sam & Max Remastered Trilogy) have now brought the cast back out to play!
A Full House!
The Inventory and its visitors have been remastered. The Heavy, Strongbad, Max and especially Tycho look a lot better than the aged original. None of the trash talk has been remastered, though, so expect Telltale humour & writing predating The Walking Dead from both characters and the menu, and Internet humour from an ancient era. To some it may be a little embarrassing, to me it was like coming home to a few old pals.
Apparently Heavy has a full dental plan included in his contract? Does TF industries treat their employees well after all? Probably not.
You’ll be insulted, congratulated, and anything in-between while trying to take the chips off all your fellow players, and hopefully winning some bonuses along the way. If you just want to focus on playing your hand, or are growing tired of repeated lines, you can skip dialogue with the press of a button.
Just be glad we’re not dealing with modern humour tonight.
Each time you play a tournament, you’ll unlock a new table design – with dozens to be collected. Some table designs have hidden properties, such as giving the Heavy a cap when playing Poker, as an example. And each win brings you closer to unlocking a themed deck of cards to freshen up the table. There are many to collect, and anyone trying to attain them all can count on playing Poker for a dozen hours or more.
Poker Night plays a far more accurate game of Texas Hold ‘Em Poker than the original. For the uninitiated, a small tutorial is played at the beginning, and one can always consult a cheat sheet of Poker hands through a button at the bottom of the screen to see if it looks like they’re holding some gold or garbage in their hands. Something I used when learning how to play Poker myself… like two years ago. So far in my life, maths has served me the best in Poker betting.
Mann. Co: Reissued!
What Poker Night is probably best known for are its cross-over items with often-hat-simulator, sometimes-class-based-shooter Team Fortress 2. Back in the day, I myself was only aware of the game and interested in it because of the items it’d offer through achievements. It was a bit of a habit for many TF2 players, especially the ones intending to stay free to play, to scour the Steam store and play games like Alien Swarm just for a free hat we’d never use. Poker Night was just another step in attaining a weapon skin or bunch of hats.
Skunkape Games are very aware of this, and with this re-release come reissued rewards. If the Heavy bets his beloved minigun, or Strongbad tries to saddle you with his glasses? Knock them out from the table, and you’ll be able to bring those home to your loadout in TF2. Expect to take a few hours to get all of them. These items are new, reissued versions of the originals. Meaning if you already have a pair of Strongbad’s glasses from a decade ago? You get a second. And meaning you will not be earning the original versions, and somehow crashing the TF2 market. Again.
Final Thoughts:
The main thing I wanted out of anything Poker Night, is simply for the game to be relisted. Skunkape’s Remaster gets the game relisted, gives it a fresh new lick of paint, adds more cosmetics, reintroduces its most beloved feature in a smart way and offers all that at around $9.99 USD (or your local equivalent).
They’ve truly gone all-in on what they needed to do. I cannot think of a better way to relist a game. Hopefully, Poker Night at the Inventory 2 will be receiving the same treatment soon.
About the Author
Lander Van Poucke Lander is a passionate gamer from Belgium with a flair for the dramatic. Valuing storytelling & narrative in games, he favours single-player games, RPG's & fighting games for their lore and vast array of characters.
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