Sam and Max, Season 1...=(
 

Was anyone else disappointed in this game? I just completed it tonight and I wouldn't say that I spent any more than a few hours getting through all six episodes. I'm not bragging though. I'm probably mid-level to below-average in terms of adventure gaming skills, it takes me a long time to figure out the logic (The Longest Journey really was loooooooooong). But I just found this game to be really...easy!! ;(

There was only ever one other location to visit which meant that the answer was somewhere (you only have so many options). And some days you could take the coat hanger from the T.V., some days you can't. Obviously, if you are allowed to take it one day, you're going to use it. Plus, the day's storyline basically depended on completing your tasks with Sybil and then buying whatever Bosco has invented for the day. *Snore!* I understand that the developers wanted to create "episodes" for a more story based adventure, but splitting the game up into chunks just meant extremely contained and therefore, boring, puzzles.

Plus, I don't know if I found "Hit the Road" more entertaining because I was MUCH younger back then, but I thought the humor in this was really bland. =O It wasn't long before all the one-liners made me want to hurl Max out the window and continue along the journey just as Sam. Bosco's characterizations never gave me a laugh since the game as a whole just seemed like it was trying to hard to be funny. There were a few great moments, but otherwise it just seemed like I was having to indulge the developers' poor sense of humor in order to finish the game (If I heard Sam say, "You crack me up, little buddy" again, I was gonna punch the screen.).

My venting is complete, time to go smoke a cigarette.

I sure wasn't disappointed at all.

It lived up to every expectation I had, and I thought the puzzles were so-so. I'm not a genious when it comes to puzzle solving; and I admit, they were not the hardest, but they gave me some new confident in my puzzle-solving that I sorely needed. :D

I laughed out loud a good couple of times, so I can't personally complain about the humour.

What can I say, I loved it and I am eagerly awaiting more.

I thought it was pretty good, actually. Far from perfect, but very solid and relatively novel

I also enjoyed it tremendously. Hm. Will do something thinking on this...

I liked Hit the Road, please down tell me season 1 sucks :crazy: (not played it yet). Sam always sayin " You crack me up, little buddy " never bothered me.

I loved the original Sam and Max (not just for nostalgia: I first played it only a couple of years ago) but Season 1 was a huge disappointment for me.

Perhaps for different reasons. All the gags felt forced - each one read slowly and deliberately as if straight from a script. None of it felt spontaneous and off the wall, as it did in the original game. The puzzles were a zzzfest but I could have lived with them if the dialogue hadn't given me a permanent cringe after half an hour. :frusty:

Well, some people seemed to enjoy it. I only wish I'd gotten the same enjoyment that Hit The Road managed to deliver so elegantly.

I loved the comical(as in, comic like) style of Hit the road. I felt they had removed that in season 1, probably because it's hard to make it work in 3d without looking silly. But yeah, I missed the comic style of Hit the road, and felt Season 1 became a little too serious at parts because of it. Examples:

Spoiler:

Pulling work orders out of a cat, putting max into the socket to turn out the light in the tunnel of love, being able to control a restaurant through connecting it to a binocular... etc.. etc...

Also, I really wish they could've added some more characters during the season so at least you felt like things were changing. When I saw the same characters in some of the last episode as I saw in some of the firsts, I was about to quit the game because I was so sick of always meeting the same characters.

I really wish they could've lost the standard formula of the episode the original poster was referring to as well, because it makes it feel like you do the same over and over again in different settings and packages.

I thought the puzzles got better as the season went on. I also thought it was hilarious..

It's just not an adventure game anymore. Live with it.

You must have a different definition of 'adventure game' to me. ;)

At least with Season 2, Telltale already knows of the flaws that Season 1 had and what didn't go down well with people, and the team does listen to feedback. They can design with that in mind, instead of having to try and address failings midway through a season. (The first three games in the series were nailed down before the first feedback from episode 1 was available, so not much could be done to address the issues). I thought that the latter half of the season was much better than the start of it.

is the story from season one funny\crazy as Hit the Road?

Glad to see that there are a lot of people out there who enjoyed it, and yes, it does get a little bit more challenging as you go along. The logic is still rather funky since you're having to accept the Sam and Max universe in order to figure things out, but my biggest problem is this:

Your daily routine tells you exactly what you have to do.

I might not have been able to figure out the "solutions" to the puzzles if it weren't for the fact that they were given to me at the beginning of the day. In retrospect, I probably would never have connected most of my inventory to what the answer eventually was, but since it was the only thing given to me, it wasn't that hard (your inventory only contains maybe 4-5 items on average.). I felt like I began each day having absolutely no idea what was needed to do, but since Bosco had invented such and such and Sybil had started a new job, you knew the answers were there.

"Hit the Road" was much more successful in that you weren't contained in solving one puzzle at a time, things carried over an entire game, as opposed to each "episode." A lot of the game is, "You are stuck in this room. The answer is only in this room. Once you're done with this room, we'll move you on to the next room. Repeat." I think what makes DOTT so fun is its expansion over other time zones which makes things even more challenging and therefore, fun!

Your Mileage May Vary. I do love the graphics and the effort put into the game though. :D

Sam's VA is what turned me off the new Sam and Max episodes.

How many of the episodes did you play?

I ask because Sam's voice was really blah in the first episode but it definitely improved from there.

And I loved all the games. :) Great length for a busy woman like me. A nice dose of fun adventure game goodness.

I have to say to ginmartini that vodkamartini is better, even though gin is my favourite in every other drink. ;)

I only played the first episode. I'll definetly pick up a copy of the complete season once it hits store shelves.

Yah, me too actually, but when deciding on a super hero name for "City of Heroes", "Gin" sounded like a better name. Dry, no olives, with a lemon twist. Mmmm...

Oh yeah, and I played through all of the season. Still worth checking out despite my complaints since at least people are still making adventure games. WHEW! :D

I've never played any Sam & Max, but Season 1 seems okay, so I'm going to get the retail version. I'm already disappointed with it though because they decided, in 2007, to make it a 6 CD release instead of a single DVD. Why do companies keep doing this?

Telltale's version for those who bought all the download episodes is a DVD (which has the games and all the extras).

The Adventure Company version is 2 CDs (one for the games and one for the extras).

I think he may have confused the number of episodes with the number of discs.

As much as I love "Hit the Road", the puzzles sometimes did not make much sense. I know, logic in a Sam & Max world, I must be crazy. Thing is, I found the puzzles frustrating sometimes. "Hit the Road" was one of the few games that I really needed a walkthough to finish.

Telltale's games are awsome. I found myself looking forward to my monthy dose of Sam & Max hilarity. The first episodes were too easy, but they got harder as the season went on. It got so I could finish an episode in one or two sittings :P

Still, Sam and Max is easily my favorite adventure game that game out on 2007 or 2006.

I think Hit the Road might be looked at here through severely rose-tinted glasses.

Personally I think the puzzles in Sam & Max are excellent: sufficiently challenging, but not obscure or annoying.

That said, I don't play adventure games primarily for the puzzles, I play them for the total experience. So I'm pleased to see an adventure game series with priorities other than looking really serious/dramatic or punching you in the face with elaborate and sometimes frustrating obstacles. I mean, that's okay too, but there's so much of that right now. The Sam & Max games just give you lots of fun stuff to discover and add unexpected surreal twists to gameplay mechanics that we already know, which in my book is totally awesome.

Games like Sam & Max and Phoenix Wright have given me the most fun in adventure games I've had in years.

Season 1 became a little too... WHAT??

Define serious. I'm not sure if I should take this kind of criticism seriously.

At least for me an adventure game involve progressing storyline and puzzles that make you think.

There's as much or as little "storyline" in a game like DoTT as there is in Season 1. DoTT is not an adventure?

Serious in the sense that you can't do stuff you do in a comic without it looking silly. In a comic or cartoon,

Spoiler:

you can let the main characters crawl into a giant fish, and let it be fished up by a fisher, and then moved to the world of fish

but try doing the same in 3D, and it does not funny, it just looks weird. Thus serious in this context is that it looks more like real life. Life is serious, a comic/cartoon is not(in comparison) and that in itself makes a comic/comic more silly and funny and gives the writer more chances to do weird and really strange things without it looking weird.

Apparently, Season One has appeared on Play.com and Amazon.co.uk. The front cover image, on Play, looks like the American copy means it's in a box; but it does say it'll change. They give you the option to pre-order now for £24.99.

http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/3358...e/Product.html

On Amazon.co.uk, the front cover says it's PC DVD-ROM not CD-ROM. And the price is slightly higher at £25.99.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/o/ASIN/B000Q...pf_rd_i=468294

I'm not crazy about 3D, I prefer the ancient handdrawn adventures, but I really do not understand what you're saying, sorry. If you mean that Season 1with its walking statues etcetera is weird where the first Sam&Max game was funny, then I couldn't disagree more. And if you mean Season 1 is more like real life, then I envy you, you must lead a very interesting life!

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I think what he means is that 2D cartoon graphics are better at establishing suspension of disbelief than 3D graphics. I can't comment on that since I haven't played Season 1.

At least DoTT has plenty of interesting puzzles. Though I'm personally not a big fan of DoTT, and the lack of real storyline is the main reason.

This makes me happy.

Really? I prefer progressing puzzles and a storyline that makes you think.

That's not the case with S&M either.

You're just not thinking hard enough. :P

Ariel Type, you haven't actually played the Telltale Sam & Max episodes, have you?

I've played through all of them, it's my job after all. "Interactive sitcom" is the best definition so far. In other words, "interactive cartoon" or "casual adventure", which is the same here. It makes an illusion of adventure game, while being simple dialog-based comedy. From this point of view I enjoyed several episodes (5, 2 and 4), but when a player or reviewer say "it's a classical adventure game at its best", I just can't understand them.

Casual adventure?

Naturally I'd like to know your definition of an adventure game. Don't skimp on the details!

Well, you're absolutely right. However, unlike yourself, I (and some others, I gather) see this as an improvement to "classical adventure games". :D

It's great that people are finding new ways to make adventure games, and because the games are smaller, improvements can be made faster. Most people agree that the games have improved over the course of the series, so hopefully things will continue in that direction.

The games are exactly what they intended to be.

On an entirely unrelated note, Squinky's quote from Gaston in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, has caused some unresolved issues to resurface within me: When I first saw the movie, my child's brain* was enraged by the fact that - despite Gaston's bold and arrogant claims - we'd just seen that Belle's book did have pictures; when she was singing to some sheep by a fountain! I'll have my revenge on you yet, Disney!

It's "Raja-the-Tiger-having-heart-patterned-boxer-short-fabric-in-his-mouth,-despite-having-only-torn-the-visiting-prince's-outer-trousers" all over again.

*Just to stress, I was entirely a child at that point, not just the brain.

That's a good quote, and true too.