Summary
The return of comedy adventure
The Good
Comedy adventure. Just saying those two words brings back a wave a nostalgia. Say "comedy adventure", and you'll think early nineties, crisp VGA hand-drawn graphics,
LucasArts and
Sierra, interfaces with verbs and funny icons, "talking" to walls and "picking up" buildings, huge inflated inventories, branching dialogue trees, "I forgot in in my other pants", "You can't do that, Larry. At least not now", and so on; stuff that will bring tears to the eyes of any true veteran of adventure games.
Before I played the game I'm reviewing now, I was firmly convinced that comedy adventure had died a slow, agonizing death. With
Escape From Monkey Island being like a final nail in the coffin (still a solid game chocked by too many self-references), I was sure that all further attempts in this field will end up being fake nostalgic pseudo-retro offerings without a value of their own.
Potential designers of comedy adventures had to face two serious problems: to ingest enough fresh ideas into the gameplay to make it more than a copy of the famous inventory-based orgies of the past, at the same time avoiding totally challenge-less gameplay and too much action, which would be inappropriate in a comedy adventure; and to hire talented writers with a lot of sense of humor.
I was extremely glad to discover that
Sam & Max: Season 1 has fulfilled these requirements. The moment I saw the introduction dialogue to the first episode, I understood: this was it. A great modern comedy adventure. Finally, a worthy heir to LucasArts' great legacy, specifically to their irresistible
Sam & Max Hit The Road, to which this game is a sequel.
The first and the last of the six episodes that form "Season 1" serve as introduction and conclusion to the over-arching story. Each of the remaining four episodes is dedicated to a certain theme. The second one deals with TV shows, the third with mafia, the fourth with politics, and the fifth with internet. All of the episodes are equally amusing; it is impossible to pick one and to recommend it at the expense of others. They should all be played one after the other, to enjoy the entire story. The quality of writing, story-telling, gameplay, and characters is consistent throughout the whole season.
I'm sure the first question an anxious fan of classic comedy adventure would ask will be: "Is it funny?". Let me answer it right away: yes. The humor in
Sam & Max: Season 1 surpasses any adventure game released after the golden days. It goes straight back to its roots, to the first Sam & Max game. While the humor in
Psychonauts (not an adventure game) is perhaps more intelligent and deep, it is by far not as poignant and merciless as in "Season 1". What we have here is the same no-nonsense, all-the-way approach to humor that was also present in the first Sam & Max. "Season 1" doesn't pretend to be anything else but a comedy; it is a great comedy from top to bottom, from the first to the last sentence.
It never deteriorates into stupid cartoon-like humor, where over-the-top violence and ridiculous animations are the only things people laugh at. No,
Sam & Max: Season 1 maintains a high quality of humor from the beginning to the end. The humor here is entirely verbal. Everything is in the dialogues - but also in the gameplay, to which I'll refer soon. It is really amazing how many jokes they could stuff into this game. Like in any great comedy adventure, the driving engine for the conversations are dialogue trees. And naturally, many of them are purely optional and are there just to provide more humor.
Sam & Max: Season 1 beats almost every modern TV show in humor, fair and square. This is one game that can be enjoyed by "laymen" as well as hardcore players. Humor is a universal force that doesn't restrict itself to a certain medium. I just watched an episode of "Friends" in-between playing "Sam & Max", and couldn't help realizing that it was much less funny than the game. The writing in "Sam & Max" is simply fantastic. The humor never gets too stupid or too repetitive. Everything is intelligent and witty, and the humor ranges from the usual disturbing messages by Max to political satire, jabs at modern pop culture, and even occasional philosophy.
Of course, one of the strongest points of the game are its characters. While the recurrent characters such as Bosco and Sybil are great and amusing in their own way, the spotlight is always on the dynamic protagonists: Sam and Max. They are two immortal characters who deliver most of the humor in the game. The most interesting parts are always the dialogues between those two. Sam and Max go around, examine objects, talk to people, and never cease to exchange comments between themselves. Having a side-kick such as Max (like in the first game, you actually only control Sam) provides a never-ending flow of jokes. If Sam were alone, he wouldn't be able to share his hilarious comments with anyone, and there would be no one to reply with hilarious comments of his own.
Working as a pair is also an established tradition for detective stories: just think of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Perry Mason and Della Street, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, or Erast Fandorin and Masa (those are from Boris Akunin's detective stories, I hope they'll be translated into English some day). Sam and Max are drastically different. While Sam tries to be reasonable and polite (at least on the surface), Max is sheer chaos. Even though most people seem to like Max more, my hero is definitely Sam. Always immaculately dressed, calm and collected, he is just an awesome detective figure. I like his intelligent, sometimes insanely complicated humor more than Max's psychopathic comments. But the bottom line is that we need them both, because they are a contrast to each other and to the outside world.
But don't think that "Season 1" owes its success entirely to those two protagonists, which were created long time ago. All the other characters are unique to this game, and they are all funny. Everyone will surely find his/her own favorite, but the truth is that none of them is boring, and they all fit perfectly into the wacky story. Speaking of which, the story is actually quite good, developing as a real detective mystery, with the identity of the main villain revealed only in the final episode, which is quite an unexpected plot twist.
Now let's see how flawlessly the humor is integrated into the gameplay. In a true comedy adventure tradition, there are items you can interact with, looking at which will provide a humorous comment by Sam, and often also by Max. Most of those objects do not advance the story in any way. It is entirely possible to play the game from the beginning to the end and to miss out many jokes simply because you didn't click on an object, or haven't depleted a conversation tree.
Those conversations trees are sometimes as twisted as you would expect from a great comedy adventure. The writers certainly didn't spare anything when creating them. What's more, often you'll encounter the same conversation topic, but the actual conversation will be different in each episode. An example for that is the "Do you have any...?" conversation topic that is entirely irrelevant to the story, but is available in Bosco's store in every episode. The things Sam asks Bosco about are different each time, but even the form and the structure of the questions/responses changes. The most hilarious one is in the final episode: Sam asks Bosco about crazy devices which would actually be very helpful in the previous episodes, and Bosco unexpectedly replies that he has all those items, expect naturally the one that would be needed to solve the current episode.
The actual gameplay of
Sam & Max: Season 1 is, in my opinion, the best possible compromise between the good old classic inventory-based challenges and the modern tendency to make matters simpler and more accessible to larger audience. But it's really not important what kind of gameplay philosophy "Season 1" adheres to; the important part is that the gameplay here is immensely
fun. In fact, I consider the gameplay the strongest aspect of this game. Never dull, always inventive, not very hard but never blatantly easy, strictly logical and hilarious in the same way. I must say that I liked this gameplay more than in the first Sam & Max, actually more than in any other classic adventure game. There are traditional inventory-based puzzles, but they are quite easy and never interrupt the flow of the game with some illogically insane combinations. You never feel you are "stuck" in the game, so you can enjoy the humor of the puzzles without breaking your head in frustration. At the same time, you'll always have to use your brain. You should listen carefully to catch hints, and think about the objective at hand and how to achieve it.
But the most amusing parts are conversation-based tasks. The game has quite a lot of them, and they are always very, very fun. In the first episode, you'll have to answer test questions in order to simulate a mental disease; you'll even have to "construct" your own dream to make yourself look crazy enough. In the second episode, you'll have a hand at free improvisation in a TV comedy show; your goal will be to direct it in such a way that the conversations of the show will make some sense. In the fourth episode, you'll beat a candidate for United States presidency by asking correct questions and tricking him into giving wrong answers to them. I've rarely seen such kind of "puzzles" in adventure games, and I just hope it will become a new standard, because it is the perfect integration of word and gameplay, of humor and challenge.
The episodic format of the game has many advantages. Every episode is a very short game, but it has its own plot with a proper conclusion, which is at the same time an invitation to the sequel. This structure makes sure that the game always stays fresh, that your objectives are clearly defined, and that there is always a different task at hand. The themes of the episodes are drastically different; you'll never feel bored because there is always so much variety. The introduction of the two main recurrent characters, Bosco and Sybil, is yet another source of humor and suspense. In the beginning of each episode, you'll be guessing which profession Sybil will choose this time, which disguise will the paranoid Bosco adopt, and what kind of an overpriced "Bosco Tech" device will he be selling this time. And the results are always amusing, just as they were the first time.
The game is done entirely in 3D, but the graphics are very smooth-looking and cartoon-like, and they look so without any effects such as cel-shading. The graphics are just perfect for the game, even though they do look a bit modest by today's standards. The transition from 2D to 3D has never been as smooth as here. The jazzy music is delightful, culminating in a hilarious musical number in the fourth episode, a song about war by agent Superball.
And the voice acting is superb. All the actors do their jobs well. My favorite was
David Nowlin in the role of Sam. His calm, "all-American" Frank Sinatra-like voice is simply perfect for the character's insane lines.
The Bad
This game is composed of six little games packed into one. Every episode typically consists of the three recurrent locations, all situated close to each other (office, Bosco's, and Sybil's), plus another location, different in each episode. The thing is that you can only access those special locations during the correspondent episodes. This means that every episode is very linear and takes place in a really tiny world. I think it would be nice if they made some of those unique locations available in other episodes.
And while the
original Sam & Max was very impressive - if not cutting-edge - graphically, "Season 1" is very modest. I loved the graphics, but sometimes I had the feeling something was missing in the presentation. It's like a TV series compared to a movie. Maybe this criticism in not justified, because the game is indeed shaped like a TV series, but I'd love to see more graphical effects, particularly in the cut-scenes.
The Bottom Line
+ Hilarious conversations
+ Fun gameplay
+ Cool characters
+ Looks and sounds nice
+ Refreshing episodic format
- Not enough locations
- Modest presentation
I was so sure that comedy adventure will never return. I spoke about the obsolete nature of inventory-based puzzles, about the growing tendency of adventures to deal with serious stories, about fashion and lack of patience in modern players. And then I found out that creativity, dedication, and sense of humor were enough to bring us a comedy adventure you can fall in love with. It avoids everything that makes adventure games unpopular today, it is hilariously funny and immensely fun to play, and it shouldn't be ashamed of a comparison to the great classics of the past. But its easy-going gameplay makes it more accessible to casual players than older comedy adventures. Playing it and enjoying its humor is at least as fun as watching the best comedy TV series.
Sam & Max: Season 1 is helping to build a bridge between games and other forms of entertainment.
