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)
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)
posted by Cole at
9:46 AM
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