No updates will be posted for the next two weeks, as I'll be out of the country. Afterward, reviews will be posted on Saturdays.

Sam & Max: Season 1 (PC)
Sam & Max: Season 2 (PC)

If you played computer games in the 90s, you may remember Sam & Max Hit the Road, a point-and-click adventure game developed by LucasArts (back when they still made games without the words “wars” or “star” in them). If you don’t, here’s the deal: Sam, a dog, and Max, a rabbit, are “freelance police” who solve crimes, usually through the use of violence or sarcasm. They started out as a comic book in the 80s, then the aforementioned game was released, and I think there was even a cartoon series, albeit briefly.

Flash forward to the wonders of the 21st century, where Telltale Games has created Sam & Max: Season 1 and its sequel, Sam & Max: Season 2. Why are they called seasons? Well, due to the magic of the otherwise-mediocre game service GameTap, the games are released episodically, with six episodes in the first season and five in the second. In each season, Sam & Max must solve various seemingly-unrelated mysteries that nevertheless are generally linked by common threads (hypnotism in season 1, apocalyptic occurrences in season 2). Thus you have a point-and-click adventure game, with each episode lasting about 3 or 4 hours of gameplay, which centers on puzzle-solving. The puzzles aren’t very taxing; sometimes they can be unintuitive, but fortunately Telltale’s website has walkthroughs if you get stuck.

The real focus of this series is the sharp writing – filled with humor, each episode guarantees a number of laughs, whether it be social and political satire, ridiculous wordplay, or biting sarcasm. The characters are over-the-top and two-dimensional, but that’s kind of the point – every episode in Season 1, for example, involves Bosco, the paranoid inventor and proprietor of Bosco’s Inconvenience, putting on an even more ridiculous (and completely transparent) disguise to hide his identity, and selling Sam & Max an expensive-sounding (and costing), but ultimately cheaply made, technical device to further the plot. The only bad thing about this episode content is the reuse of characters and places throughout the series, especially in Season 1; it can be groan-inducing to see them again and again, especially the annoyingly-voiced former child stars The Soda Poppers.

Really, the biggest downside to playing the games episodically is that they’re kind of expensive considering the amount of content: each episode costs $8.95, which is a bit much for such short games. You can purchase the entire seasons at $30 for 1 and $35 for 2, though, and you can always subscribe to GameTap for a month or two to play through them.

4 out of 5 (Sam & Max: Season 1)
4 out of 5 (Sam & Max: Season 2)

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X (PlayStation 2)

I have a confession to make: I was completely out of the loop in regards to video games from about 1999 to 2004. I blame the Nintendo 64; I was such a Nintendo fanboy that I had to have it. Shame it only ever ended up having two or three good games. So the original PlayStation passed me by. The first Resident Evil game I ever played was the GameCube remake, which I liked quite a bit. Then I played Resident Evil Zero, which was okay, although nothing great. Resident Evil 4 kicked my ass across the room for a couple weekends before I gave up on it.

Then there’s this game. I should know better than to purchase anything from GameStop’s “Under $10!” bins. That has never been, is not, and will never be an indication of quality. In Code Veronica X, you play Claire Redfield, who’s looking for her missing brother, and of course she gets sent to an island prison run by the Umbrella Corporation, who must have one hell of a lot of lobbyists in K Street to cover for all the bad shit they do.

The problem with this game compared to the remakes is the weapons. You start out with a knife. A knife. The most useless zombie-fighting weapon ever made. You pick up a handgun in the first ten minutes or so of the game, but you might as well be given a slingshot for all the zombie-slaughtering firepower it has. It takes upwards of 7-10 shots to take down one garden-variety zombie. You eventually pick up other weapons, but the ammo for them is so hard to find that you’ll be resorting to trying to run through the crowds of zombies that magically appear even after you’ve cleared a room. (Yeah, I know zombies show up after a while again in the other RE games, but not to the ridiculous level this one does.)

I gave up on this game about the time the big nasty creatures with the ridiculously-long single arm started showing up on nearly every screen -- the ones that can hit you clear across the room despite you pouring slugs of hot lead into their bodies. This game is frustrating, long, boring, and generally not worth your $8.

1 out of 5

I Played This Game for Five Minutes: Xbox Live Arcade Demo Edition

Boom Boom Rocket

It’s a rhythm game with some ridiculously-cheesy remixed public domain music on it. I actually kind of enjoyed the one song I played, but it’s not worth my $10, since I generally suck at rhythm games.

Discs of Tron

I thought this game was the coolest thing when I was about 8. I was a stupid child.

Space Giraffe

Space Giraffe creator Jeff Minter had a much-reported hissyfit about the relative popularity of Space Giraffe compared to Frogger on the Xbox Live Arcade. I think the problem is that a fistful of oily rags stuffed into a Virtual Boy and set on fire would compare favorably to the graphical vomit that is Space Giraffe. Space Giraffe is fun to say, though.

Rez HD

I honestly have no idea what happened in this game, but judging by the trippy visuals and pulsating music, I think it requires a hit of ecstasy to enjoy.

Bully: Scholarship Edition (Xbox 360)

There was a lot of verbal diarrhea about this game in the mainstream press upon its release, most of it from Jack Thompson, who called it a Columbine simulator. Of course, none of the sanctimonious pundits ever manage to play these games that they decry, because if they did, they would realize that Bully is not so much Grand Theft Auto for kids as it is… well, Grand Theft Auto for kids. But only in the sense that it takes the open-world, mission-based gameplay of Grand Theft Auto and sanitizes it for teenage gamers. The worst things in this game are fighting and boys kissing other boys. Moral decay ahoy!

So anyway, in Bully you play Jimmy Hopkins, a trouble-prone kid sent to Bullworth Academy, a private school, to get out of his mother and stepfather’s hair. Jimmy finds out that the school, shockingly, is divided into cliques: nerds, jocks, preps, greasers, and bullies. So Jimmy decides to take over the school in an attempt to stop the rampant bullying. Sure, he’s an anti-hero who takes a Machiavellian approach to gaining the respect of the various factions, but you’re still trying to put an end to the bullying, as opposed to the media bloviating about how it’s encouraging it. And it’s interesting to note that Rockstar doesn’t paint any of the cliques as being completely good; even the nerds get sadistic and vengeful when their leader, Ernest, gets a little bit of power.

But enough about the sociological impact of video games. Bully: Scholarship Edition is a re-release of the PS2 original, with some added content. I can’t really comment on the editions, as I never played the original for more than a few minutes. What I can say is that Bully: SE is a deep, fun, addictive game that will have you playing for at least 20 or 30 hours. In contrast to other Rockstar games like the GTA series, the difficulty does not range from moderately challenging to psychotically hard. Instead, missions range from the more traditional approach of easy to hard. All I have to say is, thank God, because I get tired of the “go to the starting point, start mission, watch cutscene, go to point a, die five seconds later, reload, etc. etc. etc.” syndrome that Rockstar seems to enjoy. Unlike GTA, you do have to be wary of the time – you can be busted for truancy during classes you haven’t completed or for violating the 11 P.M. curfew, and you have to be in bed by 2 A.M. or you’ll pass out where you’re standing. It feels kind of restrictive at first, but once you get used to it, it’s a nice touch of realism, as opposed to GTA, where you could run/drive around for days on end without having to stop.

The missions are the usual fare of fighting, escorting, fetch quests, stealth, and other tasks, but there’s enough variety that they never get tedious. In addition, there are classes you must attend, each one involving a different minigame. For example, art is a knockoff of Qix, math is a multiple choice test, biology is a Trauma Center-esque dissection game, and music (my personal favorite) is a rhythm game involving out-of-tune public domain songs like “When the Saints Come Marching In”. For the completists out there, there’s plenty of peripheral stuff to do, from collecting hidden items (rubber bands and trading cards) and clothes (ranging from the prep hangout Aquaberry to a hole-in-the-wall barber/clothing store for punk paraphernalia) to completing bike races and other non-plot-centric challenges.

I can really find little to criticize in this game. Interacting with people can sometimes be a little buggy, and the load times are excessively long for a 360 game, but this is probably the best game Rockstar has put out. I am especially appreciative of the fact that the romance aspect (it’s just kissing, really) of the game involves some of the male students. It’s nice to know that there’s at least one developer who realizes there are gay gamers out there, and that homosexuality can be more than just a joke in their games. That being said, I fully endorse Bully: Scholarship Edition for the 360. Now let’s go beat up some nerds.

5 out of 5

Katamari Damacy (PlayStation 2)
Beautiful Katamari (Xbox 360)

Katamari Damacy is one of those things that could never have come from anywhere than Japan, like squid flavored potato chips or tentacle rape porn comics. The basic concept is that the King of All Cosmos, who is a giant man with a hammerhead and a large codpiece, manages to royally (no pun intended) fuck things up. In Katamari Damacy, he gets drunk and destroys all the stars. In Beautiful Katamari, he manages to rip a hole in the fabric of space-time, causing a black hole which sucks most of the universe through it. So, rather than owning up to it, he sends you, the Prince, to Earth to roll stuff up into balls called katamari to replace the celestial objects he’s destroyed. I don’t think he’s getting a tie for Father’s Day this year.

Therein lies the gameplay: you roll a sticky ball to pick up stuff and make a bigger ball before time runs out. That’s pretty much it, but there is fun in that simplicity. There is a large variety of items, from yen coins and fruit, to boxy humans and animals, to skyscrapers and sea monsters, that you pick up over the course of the game. Both games have simple, colorful graphics. Beautiful Katamari benefits a little from the superior processing ability of the 360 over the PS2, but there can be so many objects on screen at once, they have to be kept pretty simple. Also, the music is one of the series’ high points – both games’ soundtracks are filled with a collection of weird, catchy, utterly Japanese songs. You control the Prince using the two thumbsticks, which can be hard to get used to at first, and after a while, your thumbs start to get sore. The controls were tightened up on Beautiful Katamari; in Katamari Damacy, there was no lack of opportunities to get stuck between two objects and spend precious seconds trying to dislodge yourself.

The difficulty is pretty easy – I only failed one mission in Katamari Damacy the first time through, and the missions that require you to pick up a certain kind of item don’t seem to have any requirements for success. Beautiful Katamari can be a little tougher, as the time limits are often just barely enough time to achieve the right size katamari. There are also one or two ridiculously-difficult missions, such as the one where you have to collect hot items to increase the katamari’s temperature, which I couldn’t manage to finish. Run over one fire extinguisher and you’re screwed. Beautiful Katamari has four extra levels that must be purchased on Xbox Live Arcade – at 200 points, or $2.50 apiece; suffice it to say I did not purchase them

Aside from the occasionally frustrating controls of Katamari Damacy, the worst part of these games is their length. Both Katamari Damacy and Beautiful Katamari can be completed in a weekend of playing, and there are some extras that you can mess around with, but I for one don’t have any interest in online play, or time attacks, or any of that silliness. They’re fun, silly games that are certainly worth a rental if not a purchase.

3 out of 5 (Katamari Damacy)
3 out of 5 (Beautiful Katamari)