Freelance Review - Sam and Max: Season One (PC)
Today's Freelance Review comes from Mack, who is an avid listener and Weekly Geek Gold Star of Courage recipient from 1997-2002 and half of 2003. He has a degree in haberdashery and enjoys playing the ocarina in a German death metal band named Silent Spank. Enjoy.
Back when I was a kid there was a shop a couple blocks from my house where, similar to a video store, they rented out computer software. Even in the savage days before the Internet and bittorrents this was a monumentally stupid idea. Given the incredibly dumb nature of their business model as well as the obvious legal issues, it’s amazing that the store was open long enough for me to work my way through the entire LucasArts adventure game library. It wasn’t that long before I stumbled upon Sam and Max Hit the Road. It was the most difficult adventure game I had ever played (until The Dig came out and redefined the click-everything-until-something-happens model). Finishing S&MHtR before the days of GameFAQs was one hell of an accomplishment. Yet even with its insane difficulty level it remained one of my favorite games to this day, and one that I frequently revisited, though I think I have still only managed to complete it once. So you can imagine how excited I was when I first got my hands on the new Sam and Max game(s), Sam and Max: Season One.
The new Sam and Max is produced by Telltale Games, who previously translated Jeff Smith’s comic masterpiece Bone to the PC. Adding to my ridiculous fan boy slavering was the fact that the games were co-written by Dave Grossman (Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle) and that the development team included many former LucasArts employees.
But enough introductory rambling, on to the rambling review!
Shininess: Top of the line graphics have never really been a concern in adventure games, and Sam and Max: Season One is no different in this regard. The upshot of this is that the game actually runs on my broken-down computer with the graphics on High. The character animation feels a little stiff sometimes, but it isn’t a game-wrecking issue.
Funness: Sam and Max: Season One is a damn fun game in six parts. Over the course of Season One, the duo must foil dastardly plots to take over the world involving washed-up sitcom actors, the mafia, a former president and the entire Internet. The game starts out at ridiculous and by the time you get to the musical number celebrating War as performed by members of the Secret Service in an all-singing-all-dancing extravaganza all bets are officially off. The writing is snappy and so much fun that I would purposefully answer questions wrong just to hear the additional dialog.
Now on to the gripes, of which there are a couple. The difficulty of the first few episodes has been ratcheted WAY down, which makes for less hair-pullingly sadistic puzzles but ultimately may be too easy for some people. The episodic nature of the game means that each individual episode feels very short. Also there are certain repetitive objectives that you will have to accomplish in every episode, and that can get a little tedious.
Worthiness: Don’t let that paragraph of niggling complaints put you off from this game. The individual episodes are available online for $8.95 each or you can get the entire season for $34.95 and if you buy the first one and decide you really like it you can pay the difference and receive the entire season. However if you’re a fan of the brick and mortar stores, Sam and Max: Season One is on store shelves right now (providing you can find a store that still has a PC games section). If you have lamented the death of the adventure game and worried about the future of the genre, you can relax. It’s in good hands.
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Score: 5/5 Buy it now! Digital buy it! Buy it in many forms! Buy it and give it to people you don't even like!
What say you?!