Sam and Max Hit the Road - Do I not get it?
 

I finally started playing the original Sam and Max to prep myself for Telltale's new game, and I'm almost through with it. However, I have to say...I don't particularly care for it.

It's not that I find it a bad game per se, but just not a great one - certainly not the classic everyone tells me it is. The plot is barely present, and the puzzles are typical adventure fare, nothing particularly memorable. So the only thing left to carry the game is the humor. I do enjoy the game's sense of humor, at least most of it, but it feels like the jokes are few and far between. Sam and Max have some good exchanges with each other and nice one-liners, but the majority of the locales and other characters are just weird. Not weird as in funny, just weird as in...weird for weird's sake. I guess this is amplified by the seeming lack of interactive objects. So few things to examine!

I don't know, am I missing something? I really want to like this game as much as I like the first two Monkey Island's and Day of the Tentacle, but I'm just not feeling it.

I heard it's not everyone's cup of tea. I played the demo and the interface was LAME.

Is the username a clue?

:D

Sounds like the recent reviews of Monty Python (Spamalot has opened in Britain so the newspapers dragged out the old question "is Python funny?") s usual, eight out of ten people find it side-splittingly hilarious, and two out of ten find it is just, as you say, weird for weird's sake.

For the record, I never finished Sam and Max. I liked the humor but the characters didn't appeal to me. But, like you, I loved Tentacle and MI1 and 2. Everyone is different.

Sam and Max Hit the Road isn't that good, it's a mediocre game.

i have to agree. i also played sam and max hit the road for the first time this year, and it was ok. funny in parts, but overall seems kinda overrated. i consider all the other lucasarts games classic. but not sam and max :D it just lost me towards the second half of the game. i only ended up looking at the artwork. which wasn't that atmospheric. colours.

Hit the Road isn't in my top 5 LucasArts adventures. I also think it's slightly overrated. I do understand why it has the cult following and why some peopel put it at number 1 - but yeah, for me it was a bit disjointed and the story was pretty weak.

However it must be said the Telltale episode 1 is brilliant.

In my opinion, naturally.

I remember loving Hit the Road when it came out, and I played it all the way through without a walkthrough. I was maybe 19 or so. A few months ago I played it again for the first time since, and I couldn't remember half of the puzzles, though I remembered all the locations, and the plot seemed to be incredibly thin, weak, and nonsensical (though I still found it just as funny). I didn't have that problem when I first played it. The game hasn't changed, but I guess I have. Or maybe because I had already played the game all the way through I didn't have any real vested interest in it this past time, and so I didn't let myself get absorbed into its world.

Anyway, I still really like the game, but it has lost something for me, unlike many of the other LucasArts games.

That said, I'm really looking forward to playing the new TellTale game. Once the Mac version is out...

Sam & Max - Hit's the road is maybe one of the most absurd games out there. At least it is more logical than many adventure games released at this time. I remember most of the stuff you had to combine to solve the puzzles were highly illogical and from a modern point of view they can appear as not as much fun as they ones were.

Still, that was part of what made Sam & Max - Hit's the road so much fun to play. It was crazy and insane. Most scenes included things that wouldn't have worked in the real world(like the gigantic ball of twine). The whole concept was that of a crazy cartoon. The humour was hillarious, and I was just sitting there and waiting for the next scene. Anyway, with todays games the goal of a game has changed very much. Compared with modern games this game can both appear as illogical and without a true plot. Or at least a very thin plot. Still, the style of the game... sam & max... the hillariousness... the crazy people... all the things that make you feel like you are captured in some crazy world makes it a lot more fun!

The puzzles are a bit more logical than other adventure games at the time, and you don't always have to try on random to find out all that matches. It still gives it a certain feeling that at least I grew both to love and hate. Love for the style of the game, and characters... and all that part which makes you keep playing a game, and hating for the illogical puzzles and constantly being stuck because my mind was looking for logical solutions. Sam & Max ain't much logical people...

I loved Sam & Max Hit the Road. Funniest game I've ever played (well, possibly tied with The Feeble Files). And the puzzles actually made perfect sense to me most of the time (I must be weird).

(what's odd is that there are quite a few other LEC classics I found neither funny nor logical (esp. DOTT, and also partly MI2); I guess S&M is different).

I also loved Hit the Road. But it's one of those things where either the sense of humor dovetails with yours, or it just doesn't.

Among all the LucasArts adventure games, Sam and Mix Hit the Road was the only one that I couldn't get into. I simply did not enjoy it, don't know why. May be because English is not my native language, or the style of the humor in the game is too narrow. I love Monkey Island series, Day of the Tentacle etc.

Sam & Max: Hit the Road is OK. The main characters are brilliant, and probably the main reason it's remembered so fondly. But a lot of the scenery and secondary characters strain to be wacky, the plot is probably the weakest in any LucasArts game, and the puzzles aren't that great. Also, the pacing is very much off, and the driving game is horrible.

I don't think it's in the class of DOTT, TSOMI or FOA, the cream of LucasArts' crop.

The game was ok. It's not on my top 5 best adventure games though. But I would recommend that you don't bother with the new series if you didn't like the original as they seem to be going in the exact same direction with it.

I'm kind of disappointed with Tell Tale though, I think they had an opportunity to do a lot more than they did.

I respectfully disagree with both those statements. Strongly.

I never liked MI1 and MI2 that much, though parts of them were billiant. DOTT I adore. Sam & Max was a bit weak plotwise, but I think the chemistry between the main characters more than makes up for it. I liked Sam's commentary on everything.

I got Sam & Max Hit the Road in a twin pack with Day of the Tentacle last year. I immediately played DOT and enjoyed it very much. Then I started Sam & Max, and lost all momentum. It just doesn't measure up to DOT. The humor is very stilted and predictable, and there was nothing about the characters or early story to compel me through the first few scenes. I took a second run at it a few months later, but lost interest just as quickly. I am determined to complete it one of these days, but it's going to be a bit of a chore.

That's funny. Because I feel the exactly opposite way. I never really liked DOTT that much, I just finished it because it was one of the classics and I felt I at least had to finish it once. I found the humour not that great and I kept struggeling to want to play the next scene... it took me about 5 years before I finally finished it, because I kept losing my save games :P

With Sam & Max I just kept playing, so curious to what was going to happen next.

Most overrated adventure ever IMO.

You guys are bonkers. Hit the Road is hysterical, bizarre, and fun to play. I'm gonna have to fight you.