Review: Sam And Max: Save the World (360)

First of all the price may be enough to put a lot of people off. 1600 points in the realm of the XBLA is a lot of money, but once you dissect the game and understand the amount of content you receive then it could actually be considered good value for money. Save the World consisting of six episodes each lasting around an hour and a half to two hours means it will take a while before you reach the games climax. Especially considering you will get stuck plenty of times, however it falls into the trap other point and click games have suffered from in the past. Logic.

By this we mean each puzzle should have some sort of logic behind it. Although we don’t like to, we found ourselves turning to GameFAQS on more than one occasion. Normally when doing so we should say, “of course” and laugh at our lack of intelligence, but with Sam & Max we most often just said, “wait, what?”. The zany world of Sam & Max is open to bizarre conclusions and it could also be the fact that we’re out of practice with this long dormant genre. However a lot of the time puzzles will be solved by luck or simply just clicking on everything and hoping something happens. A lot of the items that can be picked up just blend into the background. This was our initial problem with Sam & Max and thankfully it seems to be largely populated in the early episodes. From Episode 3 onwards it does become a much more friendly and clever experience. So it’s hardly a good re-introduction to the world, but fight past the first few hours and things do start to improve, even the humour.

While some people may have a few chuckles, for us the first couple of episodes were laughter free. The banter between Sam & Max not having the desired impact the developers would’ve hoped for. Once it gets into the rhythm though (introducing a brilliant dance routine along the way) it does start to raise a smirk. Just don’t expect the laughs to come thick and fast. What does help is the voice acting, which despite a change in actor for Max after the first episode is frequently brilliant and completely over the top. It fits each character perfectly from the paranoid shopkeeper Bosco to the giant talking statue of Abraham Lincoln.

Visually Sam & Max is really quite appealing. It’s very minimalist, giving it that cartoon look and the animations of each character really adds to the voice work in giving each one a distinct personality. It’s a bit of a shame that some of them are wasted in the stories they’re given. Parodies happen quite often and rather than being subtle they’re more like a hammer to the face. Spoofs on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and a singing contest happen in the second episode to name just a couple of examples.

While it may not be the return of a golden genre so many people fondly remember, Sam & Max: Save The World is still a game that should be supported. After all, if we don’t invest then there’s a good chance the genre could disappear once more and never return. It’s not a bad game per se, it’s just an incredibly illogical one. If for the second season they can address the problems then Telltale Games may be onto a game that can stand alongside the genre greats from yesteryear.

Rating: 6 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver