Review: Poker Night at the Inventory

The Gameplay

I'm going to get this out of the way first, I am a little sad that the only poker we get to play here is Texas Hold'em, definitely not my favourite play style (really, gimme stud or atleast an x-card draw). However, I know this style of poker has become "the dog's balls" over the last few years since it became a spectator sport, so it's quite understandable to concentrate on this style only. Also, given the amount of effort put into dialogue, scripting and difficulty I can see there being some hardships trying to support other play styles just for the sake of picky people like myself. However the game's priced at chicken scratch at $5, so really that's a pretty moot complaint.

If you know poker you should know how the gameplay works, it doesn't get much simpler than this. It's generic mouse click play, very clean and simple, click the buttons to select your desired actions. The one major pitfall here is the lack of other controls being presented (that or I'm just completely blind and missed these somehow). Options like the ability to right-mouse click to skip dialogue, or spacebar to bring up your game modifiers and stats sheet. There could very well be more options, but I didn't really feel like doing a 
glissando on my keyboard just to find them; those options seem like the only ones I would need, it's just annoying that I only happened to stumble on them by accident.

As players are eliminated from play they will head off to do various things in the bar, like drink, sulk, or chew on the staircase railing. The menagerie of characters we get here is a fun mix and although genre character mashups have been done before I've never seen this kind of lineup and especially not in this kind of game. What an incredibly odd idea, but what's even more incredible is how much it works. The game pulls you right in and it feels like you are actually playing with these icons as their personalities seem to be executed so well.

We're offered three difficulties: Easy where they all play like fools with seriously disposable income, medium where it's relatively balanced, and hard where it's almost like they're telepathic (you know, like those arcade fighter games where the AI reacts and counters your moves without fail). The game keeps track of all your stats as you play, and even gives you unlockables every few times you win a tournament in the form of new table tops (all of which are pretty cool) and new decks (of which some are cool, and some are just eye straining but still neat).

Bottom line, if you like poker and consider yourself a geek or are a fan of atleast half of these guys you will enjoy this game. It is simply damn good fun.