PS: Forgot to add that this demo is a way better introduction to the world and the characters than the "Bone" demo ever was. Not as good as "Hit the road", granted. But it's hard to beat that, I guess. The introductory sequence alone, when we're introduced to our most beloved dog and rabbit duo by seeing them crashing through the walls (BAMM!) and saving a damsel in distress from the clutches of a horny geek robot thingie (having a time bomb for a head).

And the look (or non-look if you like, considering the basic animation technology of that era) on the lady's face, still tied to the chair, when she watches the two of them driving away. Land's/Mc Connell's tune reaching it's final bizarre crescendo, switching over to the main theme.. Bizarre! Priceless! :D And, admittedly, as said, probably reeeeeeeeally hard to beat. "Culture Shock"'s credit sequence has style and then some, though! Ooooh, I wish I could finish the demo at least once. Patience is a sharp razor to swallow indeed.

Some people experiencing random crashes have reported on the TTG website that lowering the resolution in the settings by one notch fixes the issue.

Thanks, jp! Found the thread. Kind of weird that the game has problems with some Ati cards and a specific older driver, causing them to overheat. Never heard about anything like that. :crazy: Anyway, I don't have an Ati card. I realized I was running "Culture Shock" in 800x600 resolution the whole time, with the AA settungs cranked up in the driver options of my card. Maybe changing the detail level to "low" and turning off AA will do the trick. We shall see.*

I've never had a complete system freeze like that under XP. No bluescreen, nothing. Just the game coming to a sudden halt at a random point and then... nothing. Now that I've read that the game would cause certain cards running with a certain driver to overheat ( :crazy: ), these symptoms sound vaguely familiar. I think I had crashes like that with a former card of mine I used to overclock... Still, W.E.I.R.D.



*edit: Yupp, that worked. Maybe my card overheated as well?! :crazy:

Shit, do we really have to wait until january for episode 2?

Epiosodic gaming....I dont know..

You're kidding, right? :shifty:

http://www.telltalegames.com/

bottom left corner.

I've just finished Sam and Max, and I must say, it was a nice little game, with many funny dialogs and commentaries. After playing the demo I was a little skeptical, but I'm glad I finished the game (well, I had to since I got it for free.. ;))

But I have a real problem with reeeeeeally long loading when leaving and entering locations. First I played the game in 1024x7 and something (high graphics etc.) but after a while I turned down to 800x600 witch helped a bit, but not that much. I missed several dialogs, the screen image returning showing me some text I didn't get audio for, and the two sequences with Brady was almost impossible. It froze all the time, cut dialog, cut actions etc.. :frown: it really ruined some of the game experience..

Second trip back to Brady, the game went back to "normal" first after

Spoiler:

the soda poppers attacked Sam.

The game never once crashed though, just lagged, froze up for a period of time, cut dialog, minimized itself, etc.. :(

Also every time I clicked something, like the images in Sam's office, he froze in a position, before the view changed to the images. Max froze a little before he "wooshed" up in the air too

My system isn't that new, but it shouldn't really have a problem playing this game. I have:
Radeon 9600 128mb
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.0Ghrz)
512 mb ram
And I'm pretty sure I have a Nvidea soundcard

I've had trouble with an other telltale game before too, I can't play CSI 3, because it causes my machine to bluescreen and restart..

Edit: oh and I forgot, my machine kept popping up with a message telling me it had to little virtual memory and needed to relocate. I didn't have anything really resource-demanding open at the time, messenger was off and etc, the only thing open was Firefox. I've had much more resource-demanding things open before, when I've played games that in principle should demand much more memory..

The longer Sam & Max is running, the more virtual memory it uses up. If you've been playing for a while and transitions between locations are getting slow, etc., just quit and restart.

That sounds like the issue with the card overheating that SamIamsad mentioned. Updating your video drivers to the most recent ones should fix it.

EDIT: Theoretically this conversation should move into the tech forum...

Panthera, does it only occur with this game? Otherwise, having recently taken a look at the game's directory with its billion of audio files, laggy audio and and such could also be the result of a hard drive not being able to access files quickly enough. Due to fragmented data, spyware interfering, a bad setup, and so on... which can all lead to increased loading times in general.


I admit that none of the (Geforce) drivers I'm using is new (as in: brand new), so maybe overheating can be an issue with older Geforce drivers as well? I'm still a wee bit puzzled how this can happen at all, Ati, Nvidia, old driver, new driver, whatever... :D


...over at Telltale (for best results). Probably. :D

No, I know it's out in January. I just thought you were joking when you said you couldn't wait two months for the next episode. Can't even remember how long I've waited for the first episode.

I guess someone's going to say in January "What?! Next episode in February! Episodic gaming.. I don't know.." :Shifty:

Bought the whole season and I am so glad I did! I've never played the original, so I could enjoy one of the most interesting adventures of recent times without the emotional burden on my shoulders. Love the voices, love the writing and Max is the coolest rabbitoid ever walked on planet earth.

Kudos Telltale, I am eagerly waiting for ep2.

Ps1: Can we have proper shadows next time? It's the only thing that caught my attention (on the negative side) in the game.

Ps2: Extra credit for releasing something that has quality all over it. No stupid quirks, a well thought design, attention to detail. Every scene plays and looks, as it should. There is nothing to spoil the experience between the gamer and the game itself.

I'd just played through secrets of da vinci, before I played sam and max, and that played well, even when the anti virus was running (it checks every Friday and I tend to forget it.) It loaded for some time when I entered the garden, but no other problems, no freezing or such (I was also running an other really process hugging program while playing, so it's rather surprising that I did'nt have more problems..). I also finished Secret files Tunguska last week, and didn't have any trouble with that at all. All loading was very, very, fast, and cut scenes started right away etc.

It isn't that many months ago that I formated my drive, but I haven't run any disk formating since then, witch I probably should, since I've moved around quite a lot of files..

Aah.. I played through the game in one sitting, so it never was quit. That can explain some of it, but I've never had that problem before, when I've played for many hours. I'll remember that next time, "take breaks AND turn off game"

Hmm.. that's what you told me last time, when I asked about CSI overheating, and I'm pretty sure I installed the newest driver, rolled back to an older driver, played the game on lowest graphic setting and some other things. But I can always go and see if it's been released a new driver, after all, it's best to use the newest anyway.. ;)

Sorry for posting wrong, I wasn't really asking for help, it was more just reporting, but I know my bf wants to play through too, so all help is received with gratitude.. :)

Now that you mention it, I remember this discussion. It may have been before new driver (that fixes the problem) was released.

I hope this is something you'll try to resolve for the next episode. I noticed Culture Shock chewing up 600MB of RAM after a relatively short time running - not very cool.

Still, it was the best adventure game I've played in years. A few of the puzzles were real classic LucasArts material - I'm thinking specifically of the

Spoiler:

psychoanalysis dream sequence and the Brady Culture finale

. I'm happy to say that it felt like I expected Freelance Police would, though sad that the resources of LucasArts weren't on hand to make it even better (I missed iMUSE!)

I haven't enjoyed playing through an adventure game as much since... well, probably the first part of Monkey Island 4 before it lost its lustre. My only complaint is that it was far too short!

Oh, and the fact the voices are overcompressed, with the psychotherapist being particularly painful to listen to. And the RAM thing. Apart from those though...

Fantastic game. Really looking forward to the second in the series. I played it through in one evening after a pretty tiring day at work and it cheered me up no end.

I was thinking about this while playing too, but I came to the conclusion that proper shadows would just distract the eye too much, unless they were really really soft shadows. Might be interesting to see though.


.
Mike

yeah yeah.:P

My point is, when you've waited soo long for something this cool, then you want more fast!
And the episode is way too short anyway.
Its like waiting 2 hours from the pre course to the main course in a fancy restaurant.
Its unbearable.

What about x-mas sales and all that? Telltale not interested in cashing in?
(the next episodes are probbably not ready yet anyway ;) )

(coulnt post earlier, cause i couldnt access this site for some reason)

Shoot coz of dx.sound acc. issue i played most of it without music now fixed and all ican say, flawless,for a not mini but miniscule adv.

Culture Shock
 

Is the first adventure game in years I can really, truly say did not disappoint.
The dog and bunny duo are more relevant and funny than ever; you even get used to the new voices after a while. The script is spot on and full of good lines. The puzzles are very fair, fun and evenly spaced. The music is pretty good; I love the Soda Poppers theme. The plot arc feels just right - not stretched, just perfect. Yes, it's short, but there are tons of extra details to look for if you take your time, and five more of these coming out. Which for under $6 a game when you buy the lot is not bad at all. Definitely recommended.

I must say I loved the game and will play it again and again.

However quite a few people seem to have problems with the hardware fingerprinting which seems overly sensitive (i.e different fingerprint depending if you have a USB key in when installing etc) Even Steam and Microsoft which uses these systems are not as sensitive as this seems to be.

I worry what happens if I upgrade my PC will it stop working. What is classed as an upgrade, more memory, change graphics card etc Will the game stop working?

And going back to Telltale to reactivate is just annoying.

Anti-pirate systems should be invisible to the average user. Peeving off the normal customer will only hurt sales not pirates.

Besides Sam N Max has already appeared on the Bittorrent sites so the measures don't seem that effective to the pirates.

That said it's a great game saddled with annoying security measures.

Pre-activated (cracked) versions, or just the "demo" (which will still require activation) I wonder?

Hopefully the latter...