Great gaggles
of nuns in an Eastern European tight-rope act! Sam & Max
are
back!

I’ve been around a while. I was there when computers fought their
way into people’s homes. I was there when the thing called An Adventure
Game was invented. I’ve seen the rise and fall of genius and schlock.
The pioneering days of home computers were heady times and one of
the bright spots was a small company by the name of Lucas Arts.

Now, don’t confuse the
Lucas Arts of the early ’90s with the bloated, money mill Lucas
Arts of today whose only capability is to churn
out clone after clone of indistinguishable Star Wars FPSs. No, back
then Lucas Arts was experimenting, feeling its way, willing to try
edgy/risky stuff. They created the legendary Monkey Island series
which brought whole new meanings to “Swashbuckle.” They
created Full Throttle, a gritty adventure game centered around a
biker’s club. And they even allowed a young artist by the name of
Steve Purcell to make a computer game from his off-beat comic characters,
Sam & Max.

By the three-pronged sex toy of Xenu, that’s disturbing!

Sam & Max defined “edgy.” That is, they live right
on that hairy edge dividing the rational from the psychotic. Max
is a “small, white, rabitty thing” with teeth modeled
after a rip saw. He looks like he made a funny face as a child and
his face froze that way (so listen to your Mothers, children!). And
while he may appear to be a maniacle rabbit, Sam thinks of him simply
as a sociopathic lagomorph. Indeed, Max is exactly what the authorities
have told us we would all turn into if we played those violent video
games. He lives in his own surreal world which occasionally leaks
out from him like so much decomposing lettuce. Max is the unfortunate
love child of Salvador Dali and Hannibal Lecter.

Sam, on the other hand, is a large dog dressed in a full suit, slacks
and hat reminiscent of the hard-boiled detective. His easy-going
ways and dry humor could fool you into thinking that he was normal.
But remember, he likes Max and approves of his behavior. Sam acts
as Max’s cover and enabler, allowing Max to get into places which
would normally slam the door in his face.

So what do you do with a couple of social misfits who worship large
guns and believe violence is the solution to every problem? Why,
place them in a position of authority, of course! And so the Freelance
Police were formed, ready to take on any case the regular Police
were too embarrassed to be associated with.

Steve Purcell actually
published several Sam & Max comic books
before coming to work for Lucas Arts. These early comics have been
horded by adoring fans and lovingly stored in the bottoms of bird
cages, making it very difficult for those new to the scene to find
copies. But even without all this documented evidence to warn them
of what they were getting into, Lucas Arts allowed Steve to create
an adventure game around his Freelance Police.

The resulting Sam & Max
Hit the Road was everything the public
feared it would be – a tongue-in-cheek romp through every cheesy
tourist trap across the country searching for the lost Big Foot,
missing from the carnival side show, and Gertie, the Giraffe Necked
Girl from Scranton. It had humor. It had attitude. It was the Addams
Family without the goth.

And people loved it. Not all people, typically just the ones who
hum Tom Lehrer songs in the shower. But a lot of people.

And that was it. No sequel. No follow on. Nothing other than a few
episodes snuck onto the Cartoon Network before an executive actually
watched one and yanked the show. Requium obscura eternum.

Holy iridescent manatees frolicking in a Country Cadillac!

Then came TellTale Games,
a company formed from the old Lucas Arts crowd and dedicated to
bringing back games with the old classic style
which launched the genre. They provided a new home for Sam & Max
and a resurrection
took place.

Web comics aside, a new
story was written and a deal was struck with GameTap to bring back
The Dysfunctional Duo. They are to return
in a series of six episodes with the first episode, Sam & Max – Culture
Shock, being released on 17 October 2006, just in time for this review.

I don’t want to say too much about the game itself and spoil the
joy of discovery. But I have played the game the whole way through
and loved it. I can offer these comments:

First, TellTale Games did a wonderful job of recreating Sam and
Max. The style and character are true to the spirit of the comics
and the original game. This is a worthy sequel.

The script is perfect.
The story line is what Sam & Max fans
have been hoping for and the dialog is true to the characters. “A” to
the writers for nailing it.

The graphics are upgraded from the original but remain true to the
spirit. In the original game, the graphics looked like they had been
made with MS Paint. Now they look 3-D rendered, but with the same
Toonville style. There are also many more cut scenes than the original.

The voice acting for most of the characters was very good. They
seemed to know what they were talking about and their personality
quirks came through nice and strong.

The game-play is the same
2 ½ D as the original. That is,
the background is static or scrolling and the characters move around
on it. Everything is mouse controlled. Just click on anything which
strikes your fancy. If it has a name, then Sam (or Max) will tell
you about it or interact with it. If not, Sam and Max will simply
walk there. And don’t worry about Max blocking Sam from getting where
he needs to be. Sam has a very elegant solution for that problem.

The puzzles are in all
the classic style of inventory or dialog tree. There was also one
puzzle which barely qualified as an action
sequence, but you don’t need to be a joystick twitcher to handle
it. To say that they are logical might be stretching the meaning
of the word, but they are all consistent with the Sam & Max way
of thinking. I would place all the puzzles at the easy to medium
level of difficulty.

The play is fairly linear
with plenty of hints as to what needs to be done next. For example,
if you hear Sam say, “Gee, I’m
going to need a left-handed smoke sifter if I’m going to get past
this left-handed smoke.” then you should have a pretty good
idea of what you need to do next. The average adventure gamer should
never get stuck.

The game auto-saves at every scene change, but you can also save
anytime you want. There appeared to be plenty of save positions,
but I found that I only needed one.

And finally, it is worth noting that I didn’t find a single bug
in the entire game. This was obviously not produced by one of the
major publishing companies out there.

If you would like a small
taste of Sam & Max, then go to the
link below and view the trailer. You can also read more about the
characters you will meet there.

https://www.telltalegames.com/sam_and_max

There are two things in life you never want to see: Randy
Sluganski without any clothes on and Max with a sharp, pointy object.

Unfortunately, for all
the excellent work that went into this production there was one
fly in the eye salve which brought it down from the “A” it
otherwise deserved.

You perhaps noticed all the space I gave to describing the psychotic
leanings of Max? These comments are well supported by the comic and
the original game. But the voice actor brought none of that to his
character. Most of the time Max is just flat. Occasionally he comes
across as a whiny ten year old. But never did I feel that edge which
would cause me to always keep him in plain sight.

I can’t blame the script, the words are perfect. But any actor can
give a dozen different personalities to the same words. This is critical
because the words are crafted to imply something deeply disturbing,
but without that edge they just come across as a cheap wisecrack.

The bottom line is that
I was playing the game, enjoying the plot and the puzzles and occasionally
thinking, “Wow, that was a
funny line. So why aren’t I laughing?” There is a Voice Director
listed in the credits. Perhaps he can pull more out of the actor
for the next episode.

Conclusion

I loved playing this game.
My biggest upset is that I must wait over a month for the next
one to come out. I really wanted to give
it an “A”, but because of the flat voice acting for Max,
I can only give it a “B+” But even so, I heartily recommend
it to all Adventure Gamers as money well spent.

System Requirements:

**Required**

• OS: Windows XP
• Processor: 800MHz
  (if using a video card with hardware T&L)
• 1.5GHz (if using a
  video card without hardware T&L)
• RAM: 256MB
• Video card: 32MB 3D-accelerated
  video card
• Hard drive space:
  230MB available

**Recommended**

• OS: Windows XP
• Processor: 1.5 ghz
  (if videocard does not have hardware T&L)
• RAM: 512MB
• Video card: 32MB 3D-accelerated
  video card
• Hard drive space:
  230MB available