The classic adventure game “Sam and Max: Hit the Road” is one of my favorite examples of stellar writing, art direction and general quality of presentation in game, ever. The classic Lucasarts point and click adventure game stars a dog with a dry sense of humor and a “hyperkinetic rabbity thing” with a taste for wanton destruction as private detectives, and frames them in a sick, twisted satire of the U.S. filtered through a cartoon detective movie. It is one of the few successfully funny games.

Imagine my pleasure when a new title in the series, “Sam and Max: Freelance Police,” was announced. Unfortunately, the game was canned weeks before its release. LucasArts gave a vague, nonspecific reason, and we all moved on. Fortunately, Telltale Games, a group of ex-Lucasarts employees, managed to get the series license, the blessing and help of the creator of “Sam and Max,” Steve Purcell and “Day of the Tentacle” and “Secret of Monkey Island” vet to design it. The new games were to be released episodically online for $8.95 per episode, or $35 for an entire “season.”

The first episode, “Culture Shock,” was released to subscribers of GameTap this week, and the good news is: It’s definitely worthy of the name “Sam and Max.”

In this game, the duo finally made the leap into the third dimension, and Telltale’s excellent animators and artists have executed it almost flawlessly. The world of “Sam and Max,” a caricature of grungy east coast cities, is moved from pixel to polygon skillfully.

Telltale’s first title, a mediocre adventure title based on Jeff Smith’s “Bone” comics, had little going for it but the excellence in reproducing cartoon art in three dimensions, and this shows in “Sam and Max,” where the art is paired with excellent puzzle design and voice acting for a sublime experience in gaming.

I was worried as I began to play after the credits with cheesy retro ambiance. The voice actors weren’t the same as the classic game! The game stumbles a little with the premise of the first puzzle, which has the rats in Sam and Max’s office withholding the office phone for the price of cheese. The game rebounds for the solution, and after that it is, for the most part, a slice of pure adventure gaming bliss, which is something of a rarity in these times.

My greatest worry is that the title would not maintain the truly distinctive elements that make “Sam and Max” unique. Fortunately, the title features plenty of senseless, over-the-top cartoon violence and pop culture parody. For the most part, the characters maintain their same dynamic, with Sam playing the straight man and moving the story along, while providing bits of dry humor, and Max being an adorable urchin while providing punch lines and acting as a catalyst for humorous solutions to puzzles.

Things are slightly different now, however. Max can address NPCs directly, and is no longer available as an item in Sam’s inventory. I have to say I prefer the old method; telling Max to do something ridiculous or using the nigh-invulnerable lagomorph as a wacky puzzle solution were some of my favorite things in the old game, and often while Sam was talking with a character, Max would wander about the landscape, amusingly bored by the situation. Fortunately, though, Max is still keen on random acts of violence, and the duo still abuses their position as freelance police in the name of entertainment and comedy. (This is particularly fun in the DeSoto driving minigame, where you get to pull people over.)

The classic adventure game interface has been streamlined to the point of perfection. There are no longer separate actions for things like looking, and using, and grabbing. You just point and click. Another interface improvement is the inventory: You click your cardboard box in the corner and it just rolls out on the bottom of the screen. Similarly, options and saving/loading can be accessed through a tab on the top of the screen.

Another nitpick in relation to the original game is the general lack of grandiose locations. There’s certainly nothing as impressively wacky as the World’s Biggest Ball of Twine here. Hopefully, future episodes will feel emboldened to include some new and insane locations for our heroes to wreak havoc upon in the name of justice.

I am happy to say that the new “Sam and Max” game follows competently in the footsteps of greats like “Grim Fandango,” “The Curse of Monkey Island,” and “Full Throttle,” and though it may never quite reach those truly dizzying heights, I can only recommend that anyone who likes twisted humor give it a try. Here’s to the next five episodes, and future seasons after that.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 9:04 am and is filed under games, reviews.