To all us old…er, I mean, older gamers most remember the days of the Lucas Arts Graphic adventure games such as The Secret of Monkey Island, Loom, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, and Sam And Max Hit the Road. They were simple point and click adventure games with a wry sense of humor, a clever story line, mind-boggling puzzles, and once the ‘Talkie’ system came around, well acted characters. Sadly, this game type started to fade away about the same time that Quake rose in popularity; as players no longer wanted to have witty dialog and well written stories, but preferred explosions, huge guns and toilet humor ridden budget dialog. *cough* *cough* Duke Nukem *cough*. Well, somewhere in the far reaches of cyberspace, Telltale Games has released Seasons 1 and 2 of a new episodic series of Sam and Max games. And the Geeks rejoiced… and for a time it was good.
SYNOPSIS
Basically, for those who joined late, Sam and Max are Freelance Police who get bizarre, often ridiculous, missions from an enigmatic ‘Commissioner’. These missions more often than not deal with either mundane or world threatening problems that only the Freelance Police can solve. The character of Sam is a Anthomorphic canine with a nice suit, a snazzy fedora and a big revolver; while Max is a hyper kinetic Rabbit thing (he prefers to be called a lagomorph), with a full set of choppers, a deranged smile, and a love of wanton destruction and violence. To achieve their goals they have a convertible Desoto painted like a police cruiser, the less than willing help of their paranoid ‘Inconvenience Store’ owner Bosco, and the other quirky personalities on their neighborhood.
THE GOOD
Basically, if you don’t laugh yourself silly then there is something seriously wrong with you. These games are laugh out loud, tears in yours eyes funny. They are so ridiculous in plot, characters, locations and just about anything that it makes your average Saturday morning cartoon look like normality. Since each episode ties into with the previous ones you will see characters from earlier chapters show up later on and as part of running jokes throughout the series. Puzzles in the game can vary between the really easy, to the mind bendingly bizarre. Thankfully there is an option to turn on hints that get randomly spouted by your little buddy Max. Sometimes they are helpful; if you can take the rather subtle way at which they are delivered to you.
The first season consists of six episodes that are all tied together with a grand global conspiracy relating to a character than makes you just want strangle them through your screen. Each has a subtle hint about what the next episode will be about at the end, and almost always leaves you with a ‘Huh?’ moment as you sit there and wonder: “What the heck does that mean?”
Season Two starts off right where Season One ends, starting with a giant robot called the Maimetron 9000 tearing up the Freeland Police’s neighborhood; much to Max’s ever-loving joy. New to this season is an introductory like section before the opening credit roll that introduces to you what the story at hand will be. Also new to this season is the character of “Stinky”, a haughty young woman who runs to diner of the same name with some of the most bizarre foods imaginable. The recipes are ‘supposedly’ handed down to her from her grandfather, also named Stinky, however no one has heard from him in quite some time. When in season 1 if you wanted some Deus Ex Machina item you would normally go to Bosco’s, in Season 2 you now go to Stinky’s to get any number of bizarre food-like-but-closer-to-toxic-waste item.
The $30 price for the whole season also makes the short length of the games bearable, since considering that for each season you get 5-6 episode it comes down to about $5 each. To this Telltale also includes a Free DVD of the season for those that purchased the complete season. This DVD includes the games, all the cut scenes, storyboards, outtakes, machinima shorts, desktops, music, ect, ect. Frankly, being able to watch the “War song” by the Secret Service agents again and again makes it worth the price of admission
THE BAD
Well, the graphics are not up to par with Crysis, Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4, but they work well with the game itself. This does lead to the problem that almost all of the games inevitably lead back to Bosco’s, Sybil’s, or Stinky’s to get some item in order to proceed. Like most of the classic point and click adventures the number of locations are limited to a handful of static ‘sets’ that you must visit and solve to puzzle relating to them in order to solver another puzzle or proceed forward.
Another short coming is most of these games can be solved in about 3-5 hours depending on how clever you are, or how well you understand the subtle hints given to you. Considering that they have been releasing rather regular new releases on this series I would consider this a minor flaw, since a new one is normally on it’s way rather soon.
There are also some in-jokes relating to earlier Lucas Arts titles that might go over the heads of people playing, but then again, who would play this game without being a Lucas Graphic Adventure fan in the first place, right?
THE UGLY
Hmmm… nothing much really, well, except maybe for the Emo-goth vampire Jurgen with his ‘peircings’. All the swearing is bleeped out, there is no real graphic violence, no mature situations, and all the violence is cartoony.
CONCLUSION
It’s just plainly funny, and a lot of fun. Since they just concluded Season 2 all the episodes are available to download for those who wish to play it, getting us all excited for the upcoming Season 3.
