Sam and Max Season 1

Review from Samo - Thursday, 21 February 2008 @ 1:53am

As the race to make computer games more complex and technically advanced continues, I often have to stop myself to take a reality check. Just what makes a video game entertaining? Sure shiny graphics, 10 channel sound and 1000 ways to customise your character are nice and add to the wow factor but do they really add to the fun factor of the game? Next gen games like Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4 and Assassins Creed have gameplay that is fast paced, complex and have a plethora of options, abilities, weapons and a few will even have a pretty good story. The thing is, of all the games on the market, how many are actually truly fun? You might think that this is a silly question, but there are some games that suck you in and waste your time and you only come out at the other end wondering why it was able to steal so many hours of your life. F.E.A.R is one that comes to mind. It had addictive qualities and for the time it was technically pretty good. But was it actually enjoyable from a fun standpoint? Hell no.

Nintendo lives and dies by this theory. They clearly believe that to be entertaining games don’t need to be technically advanced. Take, for instance, The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Possibly the greatest game ever created yet it was never cutting edge. It was presented in a way that made its technical shortfalls part of the stylistic presentation. Any quality Wii title is a perfect case in point. Super Mario Galaxy is years and years behind Kane & Lynch from a technical standpoint but see how it’s winning critics over worldwide and Kane & Lynch isn’t.

In this way, less is more and that is precisely where Sam & Max fits in.




The basic background is Telltale Games saw an opening when Valve came up with the idea of episodic content. They bought the rights to the long forgotten Sam & Max franchise from LucasArts and now, 14 years after the release of the original game and 20 years since the first Sam & Max comic book, we have a new season of short episodes imaginatively titled Sam & Max Season 1. Season 1 has seen 6 episodes released and just like you would expect a from a TV series, a short, sharp blast is released every month or so and this, the Season 1 box set is no different to a TV series box set. All the episodes from Season 1 bundled together. Gabe Newell, this is how Episodic games are MEANT to work, pay attention.

The beauty of Sam & Max is in its simplicity and despite point and click adventure games cluttering the market during the early ‘90s, Sam & Max is a unique offering in today’s marketplace. It’s not the nostalgia that makes this game great though, far from it. It’s the offbeat presentation. Adventure games have always been offbeat but Sam & Max has a charm that I haven’t seen for a long, long time.

The game centres on an intelligent, shabby suit-wearing anthropomorphic (look that up on Wikipedia) dog, Sam and his ‘hyperkinetic rabbitty thing’ associate Max who form the inimitable crime-fighting team the Freelance Police. Make of that what you will, it works well enough and paves the road for some high humour point-and-click adventure. In fact that’s where the magic of Sam & Max lies. In the humour. The problem with games is that 9 tenths of comedy is in the timing and gaming is a medium where the pacing and timing is often controlled by the player. That’s why really funny games are few and far between. The beauty of the adventure genre is that the timing is controlled by the game. Sam and Max talk at every instance and about everything you click on which makes clicking on absolutely everything in the game a must, just so you can hear the inevitable story or jibe that the lead characters tell about it. Even something as simple as a lamp post has a story. It’s nothing short of entertainment gold.

The insanity isn’t limited to the amicable main characters, there are additional regulars like Bosco the local inconvenience store owner (yes, you read ‘inconvenience’ right) who seems to be able to create weapons and defence systems so intricate and expensive the NSA would be jealous. Yet he has a certain paranoia that makes him continually masquerade under the guise of different foreign nationals, a half elf and his mother to hide from the spies he thinks are watching him. Then there’s Sybill, a mal-adjusted storekeeper who isn’t quite sure what her true calling is and switches career more often than a yuppie changes mobile phone.




The puzzles as you progress through the game vary in difficulty from extraordinarily cruisy through to so effing hard I’m ready to throw my mouse. It’s the same as every adventure game, the gameplay consists of using clues to logically complete a series of tasks in order to accomplish the goal but the tasks can often be so intricate that it really can be very difficult to come up with the solution. Moment of honesty here, this is the first game where I’ve resorted to a play guide since I had my N64. For people with patience issues, like me, it can be teeth grindingly, mouse throwingly frustrating.

This is even more annoying when your mouse is half way out of your hand and you realise that it’s cordless.

I can’t recommend Sam & Max Season 1 highly enough. It’s that sort of game that is easy to sit down and play after a long days work and it doesn’t need you to put on a serious face to play it. If sitcoms were games, they’d be Sam & Max. Easy, funny light entertainment. It proves that sometimes it’s the simple things that deliver more fun than anything else.

Summary

Sam & Max Season 1 is a funny, no, hilarious, riotous adventure game that proves the adventure genre isn’t dead yet. This is light, entertaining gaming at its absolute finest.

Pros

Intelligent and engrossing stories, puzzles that range from too easy to way too hard, voice acting that steals the show, side splittingly funny, low tech means you don’t need a high end PC to run it, genuine fun for all age groups and sexes.

Cons

Difficulty curve is very haphazard. Nothing else.