 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Telltale Games |
| Publisher: | The Adventure Company | |
| Genre: | Adventure | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | N/A | |
| Buy Now: |   |
It took a couple of years, but as predicted by many the Wii is rapidly becoming a second home for the point-n-click adventure genre. Telltale Games’ own Strong Bad franchise has propped up an otherwise somewhat unimpressive WiiWare lineup for the past few months, PC-centric franchises such as Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie, and several casual seek 'n finds have made their way to the console, and even new titles such as Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law have debuted on Wii. With the release of Sam & Max: Season One, Wii gamers recently introduced to the genre can now experience the most influential franchise in the genre in years.
Sam & Max: Season One includes all six episodes from the first season, including Culture Shock, Situation: Comedy, The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball, Abe Lincoln Must Die!, Reality 2.0, and finally Bright Side of the Moon. All six episodes last roughly 3-4 hours each depending on the skill level and urgency of the player, and by themselves are entertaining bite-sized chunks of adventure gaming. Culture Shock is by far the most mundane, as it’s only real goal seems to have been to re-introduce Sam & Max (and their neighborhood) to the gaming world. That’s not to say that its story of a former child star out for revenge isn’t entertaining, but it’s a pretty by-the-numbers adventure. Situation: Comedy improves upon that while lampooning the television industry as Sam & Max try to free the captive audience of talk show host Myra (an obvious parody of Oprah), with the duo even starring in their own comedy at one point.
The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball finds Sam & Max investigating and infiltrating the Toy Mafia, with all of the obvious mob jokes that come with it. The title of Episode 4, Abe Lincoln Must Die!, is an accurate one: after certain political events Sam & Max must stop a rampaging Abe Lincoln statue before it destroys all of D.C. Despite coming out a couple years ago it's message and jokes are still relevant, especially in this inauguration season.
Reality 2.0 is my favorite episode from Season One, and finds Sam & Max unweaving the mysterious inner workings of the MMO genre as they attempt to stop the very Internet itself from enslaving the human (and animal) race. Reality 2.0 lampoons several video game genres along the way, with references to Mario, Japanese RPGs, and even text-based adventure games amongst others. Finally, Bright Side of the Moon wraps up the season, with Sam & Max traveling to the moon to try to stop an evil cult leader (in an obvious parody of Scientology) from hypnotizing the world. Despite the disparate themes of each episode, Bright Side of the Moon does a good job of connecting all of the previous episodes' events logically, so there is an overarching storyline throughout the season.
Unfortunately, Sam & Max: Season One suffers from some pretty glaring technical issues in its move to Wii. While the original PC versions were presented in 4:3 with no widescreen support, since they supported resolutions up to 1280x960 the Wii version looks vastly inferior by comparison. Obviously that would be a problem with any PC to Wii port without a lot of work put into it (except perhaps titles aimed at low-end PCs originally, like Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek), but the textures that were reduced in quality as a result stand out pretty badly here. To be fair, most people playing this on Wii are probably not the same people that played it originally on PC as I did, but even Wii-only gamers will still notice that it's nowhere near the likes of Super Mario Galaxy.
The bigger problem though is that the framerate in all six episodes stutters frequently, with any amount of extra action on the screen (such as Sam smacking Max up into the stratosphere everytime he walks past him) only making the problem worse. The driving sequences are especially bad, as the game virtually comes to a split-second stop anytime the duo’s De Soto hits an object on the side of the road. Telltale did do a good job of minimizing the load times however; while the game takes a little longer to load areas than its PC counterpart, the load times aren't very long and infrequent enough to not be an issue. Audio clips also occasionally drop out before finishing.
While the UI hasn’t changed, resulting in inventory icons that were a little too small on my screen, Telltale did add in shortcuts to make things a bit easier to access with the Wii Remote. The minus button is used as a shortcut to open up the inventory, and individual items can then be selected with the d-pad. During the rare instances when both Sam and Max are options in dialogue, the d-pad can also be used to switch between the two. The plus button can also be used to bring up the save menu.
Bottom Line:
Compared to the other PC adventure port I’ve recently reviewed, Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek, this port seems somewhat lazy in comparison. However, Telltale had a bigger technical hurdle to overcome in shoehorning the series onto Wii, as the Sam & Max franchise has always been graphically superior to the Nancy Drew franchise by a large margin. Overall, this is an acceptable port and it says something that I still thoroughly enjoyed playing through all six episodes again.
So while the PC is still the best place to experience Sam & Max, the sheer hilarity and quality of the franchise (not to mention value of having the entire season on one disc) make this the best adventure game experience on Wii despite its technical issues.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 8.0 |
Posted: 2009-01-16 09:04:50 PST