Sam & Max & Mania

Hooray, a new blog! I hope to write these more consistently than I did last year.

I recently beat Telltale's Sam & Max series, a set of sixteen episodes point-and-click adventure games spread out over three distinct seasons. I quite enjoyed the series, so this blog is my way of getting my thoughts on the series a bit more structured and also serve as a recommendation of the series.

I got Sam & Max quite a whole before I actually played it, I think I got it during the 2016 Winter Steam Sale, but then only started playing season 1 after August 2017, and then when I finished that I delayed seasons 2 and 3 until January 2018, which I then both played without any breaks.

Sam & Max form the Freelance Police, a sort of buddy-cop pairing of Max, the psychotic hyperkinetic rabbit thingy (seriously that's Max's description), and Max, the somewhat less psychotic straight man/dog in a suit. They apply their curious brand of justice through a liberal application of cartoon violence and absurd adventure game logic while making inane observations about everything and everyone around them. It's quite lovely.

The titular Sam & Max

My playthrough of the series was my first real exposure to Sam & Max. Sam & Max started as a series of panel-based comics which are much more mature while there was also an older LucasArts point-and-click adventure game as well as an animated series, both of which were more child-friendly but I think that just makes Max' violent demeanor and Sam's non-reaction to that all the funnier.

Saving the world! With guns!

The first season is the descriptively names Sam & Max Save The World. The first episode does a good job of getting you used to the way the game works, with a simple first puzzle to figure out: Having to retrieve an object from a rat in your apartment by giving him swiss cheese. Along the way you need to solve brain-teasing puzzles such as figuring out you need to open the door to the cheese-filled closet, shooting the regular cheese with your gun to make it swiss cheese and engaging in a dialogue tree with the rat to convince him through means fair or foul to give back the item he took from you.

This is the meat of the game, as most of the game takes place by either clicking around the area to investigate objects, talking to NPCs and figuring out how to correctly use objects in your inventory. Episodes tend to be structured in a way where your first task is to examine everything you can and exhaust all dialogue options to get as many items and information as possible. A lot of these examinations and dialogues are not required to beat the episode, but they're always worth doing just to see all the dialogue as it's quite well-written.

Episode 1 does a good job of accustoming you to the logic of the series, most of the gameplay in this episode takes place in Sam & Max's office and neighbourhood, which are recurring locations throughout all of seasons 1, 2 and parts of season 3. These locations also contain various recurring characters, because there's few things in these games that aren't recurring as you find out in episode 2.

I hope you like the office, you'll be seeing it a lot.

You also get accustomed to omnipresent item in your inventory, your trusty gun. While you can try to shoot everyone, the gun is never really used for such obvious purposes and most uses of the gun are a bit more esoteric than just "shoot gun at criminal", which sets up how generally things aren't really straightforward and puzzles where you just need to use an item on someone or something tend to require some (il)logical reasoning as to why that item needs to be used there.

Episode 1 also sets up that a lot of puzzles are solved by first meeting the right conditions before you can solve an item by using an item, many puzzles take the form of a chain of requirements you need to meet before you can solve it, such as telling an NPC to go somewhere else because you need them there to solve a puzzle or giving them an item to alter their dialogue and behaviour. 

You'll also learn along the way that Sam & Max has no game overs or really any failstates at all. You can mess up as much as you want, take as much time as needed and experiment to your heart's content with using items since the series has no time limits or ways to lose the game. This actually rewards the player for trying everything rather than punishing them for it, since a lot of incorrect uses of items can still lead to funny observations of scenes.

Progress in the episode can also be roughly divided into chunks, as is the case with most episodes. Usually every chunk of the episode requires you to solve several puzzles to get through one major obstacle, after which another obstacle is revealed which is the next chunk of the game. Usually this ends with a final showdown with the chapter's villain in an enclosed area with a limited set of available items, characters and objects as a final test of wits. Sometimes items you get or characters you can interact with during one chunk of the game won't come in handy until another chunk of the game, which can lead to the feeling that they are red herrings, so if it seems like something's just not working out there's a chance it's just not relevant yet. 

Caption this with an inane observation from max!

So, that's episode 1! All-in-all it does a very good job of setting up how the series as a whole works. I'll admit that it took me some time to adjust to the game, I've never played many adventure games and sometimes the game expects you to make leaps of logic which is a tricky balancing act since different people have different thought processes, but I find that as the series goes along you do get a bit more of a feel for how the game wants you to think. While things always make sense in hindsight, there's still moments where you're left wondering how you were meant to figure it out though.

From episode 2 onward the stakes get higher and higher while the situations get sillier and sillier, I adore the sheer and unashamed ridiculousness of these games. But as much as things change, some things stay the same. Sam & Max was from what I've heard made on a rather tight budget, so the developers were quite economical with their voice actors and locations. Areas such as the office, the city streets, the car and Bosco's Inconvenience Store and Sybil Pandemik's job-of-the-week return in each episode.

Personally I think that this decision was a genius move on the part of the developers, as the way they keep giving new content and context to these areas allows for them to have a whole slew of running gags and it all works out beautifully. I never felt a sense of dread when going to explore an old location, but always found myself wondering what was new. The same happens when old characters pop up in later episodes, I think it's far better to design your game this way than hamstringing yourself by always having to make new characters and location exclusively on a tight budget.

This is an exceedingly smart way of driving.

My rankings of season 1's episodes from favourite to least favourite would be as follows:

4 > 5 > 2 > 6 > 1 > 3

This ranking is mostly based on how much I like the general theme of the episode and how much use they get out of it, so for example episodes 4, 5 and 2 focus on the White House, the internet and a television studio respectively which make for interesting locations whereas episode 3's main location is a casino which they don't really get as much mileage out of as they could have.

This also somewhat vaguely ties in with how much I enjoyed the puzzles, though chapter 3 might have been the one I needed the least help with so to some extent I think I do sometimes like to really have a brainteaser.

Max sure is enjoying himself

Season 2 of Sam & Max can roughly be summed up as "more and better". The second season uses the same engine as the first, so the gameplay is unchanged, as is the general design philosophy of the game. Episodes are still broken down into chunks and there's still recurring characters, some from season 1 and some newly introduced ones, but the episodes are overall less formulaic and the plot more complicated as well.

While season 1 has the stakes rise every episode by making you work your way through a conspiracy level by level, getting closer to the real culprit along the way, episode 2 is a lot twistier and turnier, it's never quite clear how it all fits together even if it all starts to make sense by the end of the series. Episode 1 has a gag where you can see a chart of the villain's plan, but making such a chart would be much harder for season 2, and I can appreciate that.

Another change is that this season tends to have tiny chunks to start out with before they play the opening sequence, which is a nice way of getting into the episode without being immediately overwhelmed with options. This is most noticeable in episode 1, where it starts with a quick tutorial chunk but from there on out it goes in all sorts of directions, it's definitely more ambitious than season 1's episode 1 and makes up for season 2 only having 5 episodes.

Season 2 also takes the opportunity of being the second season by referring back to bits from season 1, such as short detours to season 1 locations or characters from season 1 who didn't get to do much being expanded upon. Of course this is not at the expense of new characters and locations of which there are plenty! The role of the Sam & Max's office and neighboring streets has been reduced somewhat and season 1's running gags are referenced but not strictly enforced anymore.

Overall I definitely prefer season 2 over season 1, they took an already polished, well-made product and polished it even further, and in doing so created an excellent point-and-click adventure game.

Overall my preferences this season are as follows:

4 > 5 > 3 > 1 > 2

Episode 4 made an especially strong showing by making full use of its time travel gimmick, which made for a lot of funny moments, clever eurekas and downright absurdity. Episode 5 meanwhile manages to be a great way to cap off the second season and manages to make a better lasting impression than season 1's finale. I also fondly recall episode 3 and its horror theme and it might be the episode I did most of the figuring things out just by myself for. I was rather rusty while playing episode 1, so I got stuck frequently which hampered my enjoyment a bit, and it had a bad case of introducing objects early on that only become relevant in the very final chunk, which made them feel like red herrings.

The long-awaited third season

If season 2 was "better and more" then season 3 is "one step forwards and two steps back". Season 3 saw an increased budget, higher production values and a new engine. But sometimes more isn't better, and in this case I feel like a lot of these changes were more of a detriment than anything.

The most noticeable change is how movement was altered from pointing to a place and Sam walking there to being able to directly control Sam with WASD or by dragging the mouse in a direction. This makes playing he game one-handedly a lot more awkward, a shame since I liked doing that in seasons 1 and 2, and it also means that when the camera angle changes you need to reorient yourself. It basically makes moving around harder to do, and while I understand it works out better for consoles it made me enjoy the PC experience less.

I also have several issues with the increased budget and production values, or rather how they weren't really used well. The art style in seasons 1 and 2 was very cartoony, bright and pretty simple for characters and locations alike, but in season 3 every locations, both new and returning ones, has a more grungy, dark and realistic look. I really do not care for it at all and I think it clashes with the cartoony character designs. This is less of an issue with the characters, the old ones still have their old designs and the new ones are somewhat less cartoony but still quite cartoony overall, but that still makes them stand out next to each other and next to the scenery.

The game also has a lot more cinematic touches, there are more cutscenes, the lighting system has been revamped. This is nice when it works well, but I noticed the game has a lot more animation errors as a result, such as times when Sam would be stuck doing a weird animation after teleporting, instances of characters being blocked by objects due to weird camera angles during conversations, really unnatural and distracting lighting effects on character's faces (Superball's sunglasses are the world offender) and times when facial or bodily expressions just come out looking weird or not fitting the dialogue very well.

These problems to me feel like the developers, Telltale Games, felt that they needed to modernize the series to be more cinematic, but they just didn't do a good job of it so the cinematic feel comes across as somewhat janky and the basic gameplay suffers as a result of it.

Don't let this make you think I didn't enjoy the game though! At its core it's still very much a Sam & Max game, the charm, wit and heart is still there and this season is the most unpredictable and diverse thus far with a more complex plot as well and a few genuinely emotional moments here and there too.

There are characters both new and old, just as in season 2, though I did miss some of the prominent season 1 characters who didn't get to appear much in season 3. I suppose they felt that going to Bosco's and Sybil's every episode would be a bit much by the third season, and you'll spend very little time this season in locations from past areas, and ones you do find yourself in have been redesigned anyway.

One noteworthy thing was the inclusion of Max' psychic powers, which he can channel through Toys of Power for various puzzle-solving and hint-giving effects. These powers are using through a first person perspective, which can be awkward at times, but they are a fun way to change up the gameplay and are good tools for adding more variety to puzzle-solving. Plus it is just fun to read minds or look into the future.

Overall my preferences this season are as follows:

5>3>2>4>1

Episode 5 definitely stuck out as the best episode of the season. It's the big climax of the season and the series and it's a worthy end to it all. There's just a lot going on in this episode and a lot of plot threads come together. It's also the most nostalgic episode of the season with the most references to past seasons which made me enjoy it more. Season 3 has a fun first chunk which lasts just shortly enough to not overstay its welcome and the two chunks that follow just have a nice flow of puzzles and narrative I really digged. Episode 2 has a unique take on how the chunks work by letting you freely switch between four filmreels for different chunks, though I did feel there were too many annoying mole people this episode. Episode 4 sort of felt weird since it was the climax of the supposed story arc but then the real climax happens in episode 5, and just in general it wasn't as memorable as episode 5 was. Episode 1 was when I was still adjusting to all the changes which coloured my perfection, but I also don't really like how much of it takes place on the kinda dirty and bland streets rather than nice-looking interiors and it also was divided into too many self-contained chunks for my liking.

Also can I just say that these two are adorable?
I totally ship them and you cannot and will not stop me.

So, that's Sam & Max! I'm really glad I got these games and strongly recommend them if this write-up made them sound fun. They're roughly 30 dollars in total as a bundle and they are sizably discounted when on sale so it's worth it to put them on your Steam wishlist or wherever else you can buy them from.

I think it is a shame that season 3 didn't really live up to the high bar set by season 2, but it was still a satisfying set of games in its own right. I really doubt we'll ever see a Sam & Max season 4 but I'd be totally down for a Sam & Max reboot with an entirely new supporting cast.