Reviewed: January 18, 2008
Reviewed by: John Bowlin
Publisher
Telltale Games
Developer
Telltale Games
Released: January 10, 2008
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1
8
9
9
6
8.8
System Requirements
Recommended System
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
For the last year Telltale Games partnered with GameTap, Valve, and other online venues for downloadable games have been proving that the concept of episodic gaming can and does work! After the success of Season One of their Sam & Max humorous point and click adventures, Telltale Games is back for more with Sam & Max Season Two. They kicked it off with a bang over the Christmas holidays with Sam & Max Episode 201: Ice Station Santa, which was naturally a holiday themed game. And now they are bringing us Sam & Max 202: Moai Better Blues. In this episode Sam & Max visit the lush tropical vacation destination of Easter Island!
In this episode Sam & Max are back from the North Pole and find that a strange triangle thing is chasing their friend Sybil up and down the street. After talking to a few of the other residents Sam and Max figure out a way to stop the Triangle, but not before the giant talking Mt. Rushmore head of Abraham Lincoln gets sucked into the triangle! And then Sybil jumps in after! So naturally having nothing at all better to do, Sam & Max follow them for some exciting and hilarious adventures.
Like all of the previous Telltale Sam & Max games, Episode 202 uses the same superb point and click interface. It’s extremely easy, but if this is your first adventure game, not to worry, because there is a tutorial built into the game just for you. In general you just point at anything you want to interact with and click it. If you have an item in your inventory you want to use on something, click your box at the bottom of the screen and then click the item, then click it on what you want to interact with it on. It really can’t get much simpler.
The puzzles in Episode 202 were pretty hilarious and made a kind of twisted sense once you understand the whole humor style of the series. It may take a beginner a while to get going, but the beauty of this game is that it has a built in hint system that you can specify how often you want the game to give you clues. You can also get a lot of ideas just by talking to all of the many hilarious NPC characters scattered around the game. Click on anything and everything. Even if it’s not something you can immediately use, it might give you a hint, and even if it’s completely irrelevant, Sam and Max will usually have something funny to say about it.
You can save the game at any time, but the game conveniently auto-saves for you after you solve any of the puzzles, so there isn’t a big need to worry about it. Besides the puzzle solving point and click there are a few mini-games, such as the mechanical surf board machine, during which you can optionally use the keyboard for more precise controls.
The humor in Episode 202 was quite a bit on the lighter side than the humor in 201 Ice Station Santa, but it’s still a bit dark in a few places. Still, it’s good fun for all ages so no need to keep this one hidden from the kids. The only real downside to the game is that it is over before you know it, which is sort of the nature of episodic gaming.
Crisp animation that perfectly fits the subject matter is how I would describe the graphics of the Sam & Max Telltale Games series, and Episode 202 is no exception. The game plays out like a living and breathing cartoon, and that just adds to the fun. The sync between the animation and the sound effects is spot on perfect as well, and it all just oozes a professionalism that few games have, even if it’s using relatively simple technology that runs on extremely modest PC hardware. You really couldn’t ask for better graphics and have it still be true to the Sam & Max heritage. And if you do have a high end PC you can always bump the resolution up to 1600x1200 if you want to.
With top-notch voice acting talent combined with very clever writing, Sam & Max is an aural feast. The two headlining characters are extremely well voice acted as always, and all of the supporting cast do an amazing job as well. Particularly funny was the voice of Jimmy Hoffa. Bosco was just as funny as ever too. Not only is the voice work great, but the music is spot on as well and really adds to the flavor of the game. The music is somewhat reminiscent of the old Loony Tunes zany style.
This is probably the one area where an episodic game could go either way. I spent around three hours or so playing through this episode. Someone far more experienced with adventure games might zip through it in an hour or so. But still, there was a lot of stuff to click on and while you didn't have to click on everything, you generally wanted to anyway because Sam & Max or the supporting cast always had something hilarious to say about just about everything in the game. This kept the game from being boring as well when trying to figure out some of the puzzles.
You can get this episode stand-alone for $9 from the Telltale Games site, but there are other ways to get this adventure as well. One is to buy the full season 2 from Telltale directly, which is only $34.95 for all five episodes, so seemingly a reasonable price for the "full game" type of deal. Or you can also subscribe to GameTap, since all of the Sam & Max games are getting released on that gaming service too. Considering some of the other options besides buying the stand alone episode straight up and this game really looks like a bargain, even if it's an adventure game with relatively low replay appeal.
If you’re looking for a traditional and humorous point-and-click adventure, you could do a lot worse give the new Sam & Max series from Telltale Games a try. This game is the second part of a new season, but each part is only tangentially related to the previous episodes. Still, I do recommend that you play the earlier games, and so you may as well play them all in order. The puzzles are not terribly hard but a few of require a little thought, though help is available if you desire it. Most of the puzzles are designed to make you laugh, and laugh you will. Sam & Max is good clean fun for nearly the whole family. I can’t really recommend it enough!