Sam & Max Season One - A New Experience In Adventure Gaming!
Written: Oct 20 '08 (Updated Oct 22 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice graphics, great music and voice acting, excellent stories and puzzles, lots of humour...
Cons: ... more episodes / locations / characters would have been nice...
The Bottom Line: Overall Sam & Max Season One provides an excellent gaming experience for adventure gamers, fans of the original Sam & Max or not.
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| captaind's Full Review: PC Game Sam & Max: Season One (PCDVD) for Windows |
Sam & Max Season One is a recreation of two of yesteryear's most-loved adventure game creations, created way back by Steve Purcell. Though the original Sam & Max Hit the Road game didn't quite grab me the way it did some people, I was happy to learn that Telltale Games were making a new game of it, and then some time later when I actually got hold of the game, was even happier to see what a great job they'd done. Steve Purcell was heavily involved with this project, and the original style and humour of the older game remains, but it's definitely not necessary to have played the original or know of the characters to enjoy this game. Telltale Games have created a game that will be enjoyed by purists and newcomers alike.
Sam is, of course, a large dog and Max is a hyperkinetic bunny thingy, both of whom work as freelance police, or thereabouts. Their job is to solve mysterious crimes, capture criminals and above all keep the peace - violently, if possible. They face all sorts of insane cases to tackle, with all six episodes having a common thread which becomes apparent for some time.
Purely as an adventure game, Sam & Max Season One lacks something compared to other adventure games in the sense that there aren't many locations to explore, characters to talk to and items to find and use. This is more than ably compensated for however by the wonderful storylines, hilarious dialogue and excellent puzzles within each episode. There are changes to familiar characters from episode to episode; for instance store owner Bosco always has another conspiracy theory and is trying another disguise, while on the other side of Sam & Max's office, Sybil is constantly trying new jobs. So, while there is quite a bit of repetition at times, it's skilfully designed to keep you interested and a little lateral thinking usually provides the answer to your latest problem.
The graphics are good - not earth-shatteringly amazing, but the 3D looks solid and contains enough detail, the character animation is very good and the whole thing has a wonderful cartoon-like quality that fits the game perfectly. In fact due to the fact that you will often try things simply to see what happens, not so much because you think they'll help you with puzzles (though you never know!), the whole gaming experience is more like watching an interactive animated TV series. The graphical style rather reminded me of Grim Fandango , which is no bad thing. The sound is great too - good FX when appropriate and a wonderful music score (mainly jazz, but other genres as well) by Jared Emerson-Johnson, who also did the music for The Bard's Tale. The voice acting is excellent across the board - from the thoughtfully laid-back Sam (David Nowlin) to the hyperactive, almost child-like voice of evil, Max (William Kasten) to any of the characters they meet along the way.
There are many things, some quite unusual or unexpected, that you will end up doing in this game; for instance, getting admitted to a home for the rehabilitation of seventies child stars, appearing on a chat show, becoming a pop idol, visiting the moon, running for president, starting a war, bringing down the internet, putting Max back together again, getting trapped inside a dream, getting trapped inside a text adventure... There are all sorts of weird and wonderful possibilities, and with some ingenious puzzles along the way, time just disappears when you play this game. Each episode takes about 2-3 hours to complete, perhaps longer if you really explore all the possibilities available to you. Overall it will probably take you 15-20 hours to complete the season; not too bad though it would have been nice to have had an extra couple of episodes. Still you can't have everything.
The interface is extremely simple - just point and click. You don't even need the right mouse button unless you want Sam to describe an object in his inventory. Click on the icon at the top of the screen for options, click on the box at the bottom of the screen to access your inventory. It's elegantly simple and works very well; in fact this is probably the most successful interface for a 3D adventure game I've seen.
There are a couple of small negatives; in particular, clicking on your car brings up a list of where you can go... but this is often just one location, or not go at all. The time taken for this and the cut scenes for them getting in the car and driving off seemed a little wasted; again, a few more locations certainly wouldn't have gone amiss. However with the brilliant humour that the game has, I'm willing to forgive it such shortcomings.
The game is rated 12 (PEGI rating) for language. There are a few naughty words here and there, and one instance of a stream of rhetoric in which obscenities are bleeped out (if you have the subtitles on, this shows as *censored*). The 12 rating did seem a little harsh really, though there was also a little innuendo and some comic violence. I feel that if this were a film, it would be rated PG-13.
There is some extra content on the disc in the form of a "making of" video (not bad actually, quite interesting and not long enough to get tedious), character bios (well... you get to know the characters well enough in the game), concept art (always of dubious benefit to be honest) and desktop wallpapers. Of more interest there are theatrical trailers for all six episodes (surprisingly, these were a lot of fun to watch even right after we'd completed the game) and an MP3 soundtrack sampler. Since I love the music score for the game, I found this to be a nice extra.
I really found it difficult to decide what rating to give Sam & Max Season One - in terms of traditional adventure gaming it is lacking in some aspects, but I decided on 5 stars in the end because it was hugely enjoyable, very funny, and did something different to the genre - commercially, I can't remember anyone doing an episodic adventure game before (could be wrong, of course). To be honest I wasn't sure the idea would work, but it does, and very well. I'll certainly be looking to buy Sam & Max Season Two!
System Specs
OS: Windows XP / Vista (32-bit)
RAM: 256Mb
CPU: P4 1.5GHz
GPU: 32Mb
HDD Space: 1.5Gb
Format: DVD-ROM
Tested On: Packard Bell iMedia
The episodes in Sam & Max Season One are:
Episode One - Culture Shock
Episode Two - Situation: Comedy
Episode Three - The Mole, The Mob and the Meatball
Episode Four - Abe Lincoln Must Die!
Episode Five - Reality 2.0
Episode Six - Bright Side of the Moon
Some episodes are better than others, but I think my favourite was episode four, followed closely by episode five, then maybe episode two. But they were all good!
See also:
My Top Ten Commercial Graphical Adventure Games
Sam & Max / Day of the Tentacle Double Pack
Recommended:
Yes
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