Sam and Max Episode 2: Situation: Comedy Review

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            Sam and Max Episode 2: Situation: Comedy

Review by ScoutFebruary 2007

There’s a little hole-in-the-wall Lebanese restaurant a couple of blocks from my house. I go there once a month, regular as clockwork, for a take-out order of their version of lamb schwarma, a delicious dish of rice, veggies, and tender chunks of lamb with a side of freshly baked pita bread. For eight bucks, I get almost three meals out of it. It’s always the same: tasty, satisfying, and predictable.  I never hesitate to recommend the place to anyone on the lookout for good, no-frills Lebanese food because I know they’ll leave with a happy tummy and an undamaged wallet.

What does my love for lamb schwarma have to do with the new Sam and Max: Situation: Comedy? Substitute Telltale for the Lebanese joint and a Sam and Max episode for a white paper bag of carryout, and you have my take on this series. Sam and Max are a safe bet for any fan of third-person, comedic adventure games.  Sam and Max will leave you satisfied, fulfilled, and with enough cash left over to pay the electric bill. Just don’t go in expecting a four-course meal with dessert, white tablecloths, soft music, and an ever-changing menu displayed on a chalkboard.

Situation: Comedy is pretty much like its predecessor, Culture Shock. It has the same core characters, the same core locations, the same gameplay formula, and the same loving attention to detail. Like Culture Shock, Situation: Comedy is fun, intelligent, and extremely well-crafted. Telltale has honed its operation, settled on a few tried-and-true recipes, and is now busy dishing up servings of Sam and Max to a regular clientele.

In case you aren’t familiar with the Telltale series, Sam and Max are, respectively, a big, goofy dog in a private eye getup and a short, certifiably insane rabbit dressed in … well …. nothing but its own fur. They are freelance police, meaning they have something to do with crimes, justice, and writing their own rules. Mostly writing their own rules. They are headquartered on the second floor of a decrepit two-story brownstone, which is flanked on one side by a convenience store and on the other by a tattoo artist/piercer/therapist/tabloid publisher. Bosco, the paranoid price gouger, runs the convenience store, and Sybil, the profession-fickle entrepreneur, runs the ex–tattoo parlor. Both characters are just as loony as Sam and Max and exist to populate the neighborhood, add color, and provide a few necessary inventory items for use later in the game. There is an old LucasArts adventure game and a long-running comic based on Sam and Max. Steve Purcell is the creator.

Just like Culture Shock, Situation: Comedy starts out with a couple of puzzles set in the ‘hood. Once those are resolved, Sam and Max spend the rest of the game in the second, and main, location, a TV studio going by the call letters of WARP. An Oprah Winfrey–like character, Myra Stump, is holding her audience hostage, giving them free stuff against their will. Sam and Max have been called in to break up the festivities and release the long-suffering audience.  But to free the audience they need to get on the talk show, and to get on the talk show they need to prove their worth to Myra Stump.  This premise is the core of Situation: Comedy, and its resolution takes up the bulk of gameplay, climaxing with Sam and Max’s inevitable appearance on Myra’s talk show. While this sounds a bit generic and dreary, it’s mostly great fun and worth the 2.5 hours it takes to play from beginning to end.

Making a return appearance from the first game are the Soda Poppers, three washed-up child stars called Peepers, Whizzer, and Specs.  The Poppers are little media whores, seemingly ageless, changeless, and as about as self-absorbed as media whores can be. There is also a self-absorbed new-age mystic, a self-absorbed situation comedy star, a pretty indifferent cow, and a self-absorbed director with the ability to appear on any one of the connected TV sets a split second before Sam and Max arrive. All of these shows are smoke and mirrors with zero socially redeeming qualities, and of course Sam and Max eat it up. They gleefully make their way from set to set, show to show, tossing out wicked one-liners, outwitting director, host, contestants and new-age whizzes alike in their quest to land a spot on Myra’s show. The final showdown, the big finale, is very similar to the one we experienced in the first Sam and Max in that once you deduce the shape of the puzzle, it’s just a matter of navigating the dialogue tree until you find the proper responses and then it’s game over and credits.

There’s really not much more to say. It’s only a 2.5-hour game, after all. It’s the second in the series and so suffers a bit in comparison to the first, highly anticipated game. Even as I write this review, the third installment has already been released and the fourth is on its way.

There will no doubt be big retrospective reviews galore once the series wraps up, but for now there are couple of questions that occur to me. Is this short game worth your money? Are the rest of the games going to follow the same formula set down by the first two? The short answers are “it is” and “I don’t know.”  If you liked the first Sam and Max, you’ll like this one too. The devs tinkered a bit with the voice acting, I think, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same game except for where it’s different.  Just like Culture Shock, Situation: Comedy is fun and expertly made. Unlike Culture Shock, it’s not about crazed ex-TV stars but about crazed current TV stars. If I have any serious criticism, it’s that the writing seems to have slipped a bit. I was also initially put off by the shameless coopting of popular, real-life TV shows, but that quickly faded as the charm of Sam and Max took over.

There are more of these little games on the way. So how long will the gaming public tolerate the same dish time and time again? Quite a while, I’m guessing. If the quality holds and the ingredients remain fresh, probably for as long as Telltale wants to keep cooking them up. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Telltale Games Publisher: Telltale Games/Gametap Release Date: December 21, 2006

Available for: Windows

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System Requirements

Windows XP 800 MHz (if using a video card with hardware T&L); 1.5 GHz (if using a video card without hardware T&L) (1.5 GHz recommended) RAM: 256 MB (512 MB recommended) Video card: 32 MB 3D-accelerated video card

Where to Find It

Telltale Games

GameTap

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      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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17 Responses to First Impressions: Heavy Rain

  • Toger

    I hate QTEs, but Heavy Rain is sitting in my Amazon cart waiting for me to push the button. I don’t even own a PS3, but I plan on buying the game anyway. I do have a good friend who’ll let me play at his house. Of course, I’ll have to drive 100 miles, one way, through the snow to get to his house. His chat-happy birds will cheerfully chirp thereby completely disrupting any atmosphere, but I can play.

  • David

    What!?  Heavy Rain is full of QTEs?  I totally did not see that coming.

    The whole dad experience thing sounds intriguing.  I’m already getting odd looks from my girlfriend for exclaiming over cute kids on the bus or at the mall, something like what you described might send my biological clock over the edge.

  • Lewis B

    My sentiments exactly David!

    Mat has been playing the Heavy Rain demo for a while now, and although he admits he is intrigued by the story, he does constantly complain about the control method.

    R2 + Analogue stick to run? *scoff*

  • Gregg B

    @Lew: DEMO?! PS3 DEMO?! *runs off to PS3*

    That sounds like the Batman: Arkham Asylum controls – Crazy Bonkers Design. The sort of design that puts pull handles on push doors.

    @Steerpike: “I despise children. They are disgusting and annoying. They knock things over. They interfere with everything. They’re not useful until they’re at least 13, when you can get them to mow the lawn and stuff. But you can pay a service to do that for just a few hundred bucks a year and the service won’t vomit on you, shit in its diapers, grow up to resent you, or otherwise suck. Don’t flame me and don’t post comments to the contrary: kids are repulsive. Why anyone would want them is beyond my feeble imaginings.”

    HAHAhahaha- I er, – hahahaha – you’re as outspoken as me about demon spawn children.

  • Lewis B

    Yeah its been on the internet for weeks and weeks Greggi.  I think you have to do a couple of online puzzles etc to get the appropriate code or something.

    Search on Kotaku, they first ran with it IIRC.

  • Mat

    The puzzle code was for early access before it hit the PSN Store. It’s been available to all since last week.

    Regarding the demo, it took me around 3 or 4 attempts at it to appreciate it. First time around I couldn’t have been more dissapointed by it, but after the 3rd or 4th I decided I wanted to stick with it. I don’t think the demo is a particularly great example of what the game supposedly does best either – choice. I also HATE the control scheme and some of the voice acting is so wooden. Creating an immersive, realistic game is fine but having characters stumbling into tables and fridges because of the ham fisted controls, and listening to French voice actors impersonate Americans does remove that realism a little!

    Still, I rushed out to buy it this morning and will rush home from work to play it in about an hour!

  • xtal

    @ Toger: I don’t own a PS3 either, and it’s not like Heavy Rain seems to be “that” game which makes you run out and buy one– like Bioshock made me run out and get a 360– and it’s also not like this game looks groundbreaking in any way, because it really doesn’t. It’s just got me curious…and people tend to do crazy things the week after they get their yearly bonus. Soooooo yeah, who knows; maybe I’ll own a PS3 soon, but like hell I would admit that it was for Heavy Rain. Psh. I’d tell people it was because I wanted to watch BSG on blu-ray; though anyone who knows me would see right through that lie since I am an avid non-format-upgrader: I’ll switch my BSG collection from DVD to blu-ray the day I upgrade my copy of Jurassic Park from VHS to DVD. (Hint: never)

  • Toger

    @xtal: I’m in no hurry to upgrade my meagre DVD collection to blu-ray either, but I have to say the movies I’ve watched on my friend’s PS3 are absolutely stunning. Blade Runner was simply breath-taking in blu-ray and it made me want a PS3. I don’t think Heavy Rain will be a system seller for me, but I’m betting the game from the Ico team will.

  • xtal

    A game from the Ico team, you say? Hmmm. I’ve been making rounds on Kijiji and Craigslist looking for a copy of Ico (eBay prices are so shudder-inducing) for a few days now. I really need to play that game after my experience with the indescribable Shadow of the Colossus.

    It’s good to know they haven’t died some Interplay-esque death in the meantime.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Nope, they’re a small team that works within Sony. Fumito Ueda is the lead and he’s got like ten or so people who’ve worked with him on all his games. Sony pretty much lets them do what they want.

    The Last Guardian is the game that’s coming up from them. It looks more like Ico and less like Shadow of the Colossus to me, which is to say it appears to be focused on platform elements. If I didn’t already have a PS3, it’d be the game that sells it.

  • Gregg B

    @Toger: Ooh, Blade Runner on Blu-ray, gorgeous in all its gorgeosity. In 5.1 it sounds incredible too.

    I bought my PS3 for Team Ico’s unnamed-at-the-time game, Heavy Rain (back when it was just a teaser), LittleBig Planet (yes, yes, I know), Dead Space and Motor Storm: Pacific Rift which sort of pushed me off the fence.

  • Toger

    Gregg, oh yes. The surround sound was spectacular. Did I mention my friend’s HDTV is 72″ (obscene, isn’t it)? It’s like being at a high-class theatre: better food, pauses for bathroom breaks and no one talking through the movie.

    Is Trine up on PSN, yet? If so, that might be my tipping point: Last Guardian, Heavy Rain and Trine.

  • Gregg B

    *spits tea out, despite not drinking any*

    O_O

    72″?! I’m speechless. I can only imagine how awesome that is. Size does matter.

    Not so sure about Trine… hang on. I think it is.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I think it is too, Toger. I’ll check.

    To be honest, though, I doubt you’d be disappointed with the purchase even if Trine’s not there yet. I’ve been way happier with my PS3 than with my 360. Demon’s Souls, Valkyria Chronicles, Uncharted, Folklore, even little games like Flower – I’ve had more concentrated fun with the PS3 than with Microsoft’s console, which tends to gather dust for months between game releases.

    72″???? I thought size didn’t matter!

  • Toger

    Size doesn’t matter. 😀

    In my friend’s defense, it was a great deal: opened box, itty-bitty scratch on the case, not a dead pixel to be seen and it was less $$ than the 60″ he originally wanted.

    Thanks for checking guys. I’ve played a tiny bit of Uncharted, but I’m horrible at the combat. Flower intrigues me. As does Demon’s Souls, but I know that game will crush my soul.

  • Gregg B

    There were certain moments in Flower where it just totally succeeded in conveying a feeling that I can’t say I’ve had in many other games, usually when rushing across a field through the grass or through a canyon or just skimming a pond, but it was never anything to do with collecting bloody petals or fulfilling some rudimentary puzzle. I think my problem with it was that it felt like it was trying to be this deeply emotional piece but in the end there seemed to be too many concessions to being a game rather than just running with the emotive side of the experience. One thing I am sure about though, is the trophies. Don’t get me started on the fucking trophies…

    One of my favourite little games on the PS3 is Everyday Shooter. It’s got a brilliant soundtrack that suits its raw visual style and I love how each level requires a certain tactic or strategy to survive it. It’s a very satisfying game in small bursts.

  • Hanover

    Unfortunately Cage mucked up the ending yet again.  The problem is that the mechanic of the game forced them to have to cheat in order to prevent spoiling the mystery of the game.

    There is also a red herring that makes no sense and is obviously put there to misdirect the player.

    90% of the game is awesome, the last 10% while not as bad as the indigo prophecy, is still sloppy.

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