Sam & Max: Season One
On May 10th of 2006 the first installment of Sin: Episodes was released. Then Valve made Half-Life 2: Episode One available on steam on June 6th. The idea was simple: each episode ends in a cliffhanger that leaves you looking forward to the next installment, which continues the story. You know, like a mini series. And yes, it’s been a YEAR and no episode two has been released for either game. Even Quentin Tarantino didn’t take that long between volumes of Kill Bill, and that’s a major Hollywood production. Does this mean that episodic content is a promise the gaming industry cannot deliver? Far from it!
As a fan of the original Sam and Max game by Lucas Arts I had been closely following the development of a sequel through several false starts and disappointing dead ends. Then the project was picked up by Telltale games and sold as exclusive content for GameTap. This worried me, since I’m not fond of subscribing to anything game related (hence my absence from the MMORPG bandwagon). Still, with GameTap I was able to drop one sum for a years subscription, which not only got me a new Sam and Max episode each month but also hundreds of other games, from perfectly emulated classics to recent releases and exclusives. Also included are Sam and Max animated shorts made within the games engine and episodes of the Saturday morning cartoon, all streaming. Brilliant!
As for the game itself it is worth the price of admission to GameTap, assuming you enjoy classic point and click adventure games. In Sam and Max you take control of the aforementioned duo, a talking dog and rabbit respectively. They are freelance police, which translates loosely as borderline psychotic vigilantes with more guns than scruples. As you navigate virtual worlds looking for clues and solving puzzles, they entertain you with snappy dialog and hilarious one-liners. I’m not going to say that every bit of dialog is comedic gold but they hit more often than they miss and the danger of spitting out your drink all over the keyboard is ever present, especially if your drink is alcoholic. The graphics are nothing mind blowing but that is a good thing; it makes the game an easy download and looks nicely stylized and cartoony despite being 3-d. The music, voice acting and effects are great for the most part, although the game suffers from having a limited cast of re-occurring characters so some catch phrases and mannerisms will get old pretty fast. The two most important re-occurring characters are Sybil Pandemic and Bosco. Sybil changes occupations each episode and her jack of all trades job experience comes in handy in practically every episode. Likewise Bosco’s inconvenience store always has a useful gadget or two; for a mere 7 or 8 figures. Yeah, expect some buyers regret as soon as he hands you his pieces of cleverly refurbished trash.
The most innovative aspect of course is the episodic format. Each episode takes between 3 and 6 hours to complete and have a clear beginning, middle and end. It’s like playing a Saturday morning cartoon, only the humor is a bit darker and more topical. The series highlights include acting in TV shows, running for president against a giant stone Abraham Lincoln and exploring a Tron-like virtual reality world full of bugs and errors. Now I’m just hoping we get a season two with another 6 episodes between Half-Life episode two and three.