Sam and Max - Hit the road....dissapointment.
 

Before you all come and start flaming me, I wanted to tell you that I played Sam and Max for the first time yesterday...and I was uterly dissapointed. I played it for 20 minutes, but that was enough to observe that the game isn't funny (at least for me) and the interface is shite. (have you seen how you have a converstation - you have to press some stupid colored boxes? BOXES!!!). Anyway....I hope that Day of the Tentacle is better.

Showing the boxes instead of actual dialogue was a very intentional decision. If you actually liked the humor instead of disliked it, the point of the boxes was that you'd know vaguely what Sam was going to ask, but since it only showed a picture of it instead of the actual sentence, you wouldn't have any of the jokes spoiled ahead of time by seeing the first sentence. It made for pretty weak dialogue puzzles though. (aka no dialogue puzzles)

Its okay if the humor just wasn't for you. I can see how the game could be off-putting to some.

yes, Day of the Tentacle could be named THE best adventure/puzzle game of all time!!!!

There is much less split opinions concerning DOTT than Sam & Max. People seem to either love or hate Sam & Max, probably depending on their style of humour, whereas (mostly) everyone seems to love DOTT.
Personally, I'd rate them equal.

Yes but I've played all of the monkey island games and I must say that I was falling on the ground laughing at the dialogue and the absurd situation while I didn't chuckly once at Sam and Max altough I tried to in the begining...believe I tried!!!

I think you're going to thoroughly enjoy DOTT.

I love Hit the Road, but it seems to be a game that isn't for a lot of people. I don't consider DOTT to be any less weird, but its puzzle structure is a little more coherent.

I agree with the rest of these guys - DOTT is an excellent game, and don't let not liking Sam & Max put you off.

As for S&M, I fall into the category of people who liked the game, but didn't see quite why everyone else seemed to LOVE it. That said, I was still looking forward to the sequel... :(

Right. Regardless of whether or not your loved Hit the Road (i loved it), it is clear that Freelance Police would have made a huge impact upon the adventure genre in a positive way. LucasArts sucks.

I liked Sam and Max from the beginning. I played it for the first time when I was 10 years old and my English wasn't that good. A few years later I liked the game even better. That's because my English got better and lots of it's jokes rely on speech. Sam and Max use quite an arsenal of strange words. :D

Also, a lot of jokes are only funny if you know certain American facts. American pop-culture, if you will. It wouldn't surprise me if most people who dislike Sam and Max are from other regions then the US.

--Erwin

I can understand why someone might not like the game's kind of humour, most of it's pretty mean-spirited, and there's a lot of pop culture references. I thought it was a lot funnier than any other game, but that's my opinion.

Sam: Max, where should I put this so it doesn't hurt anyone we know or care about?
Max: Out the window, Sam. There's nothing but strangers out there.

Seriously guys the game is not that funny. Most of the time Sam and/or max talk to the SCREEN (I hate it when someone talks to the screen or the camera) and the jokes are considered cliches or are just not funny by now. I've watched hundreds of parodies and shows like Family guy and the Simpson and quotes like " Max, where should I put this so it doesn't hurt anyone we know or care about?
Out the window,There's nothing but strangers out there." are not funny anymore. I played Secret of monkey Island four years ago when I didn't know English very well but thought (and still think) that the game was hillirious. Now I am playing Escape from Monkey Island and I must say its one of the funniest games ever produced with a lot of pop cultural references... I can't understand how someone can say in thier right mind that Sam and Max is funnier than any of the monkey island games? (or better :D )

That's hardly a criticism of the game itself, since Family Guy didn't come out until, what, 8 years later something, and IIRC The Simpsons didn't really make use of that brand of humor circa 1993.

Personally, I think Sam and Max is heavily overrated. While it was funny I found the puzzles to be a bit lame. DOTT is the much better game of the 2. In fact, it's the best adventure ever.

Yeah, don't you hate that Cervantes dude for totally ripping off the novel from Dickens.

You bring up an interesting point. Funny thing is, LEC feels the same way you do. But the thing is though, you are wrong to say that the humor in this game is not funny. One could say (and has said in many a review) that the humor is definately not for everyone, but you can't go as far as too say it's been done to death before by shows like the Simpsons (which has, in my opinion, a completely different kind of humor) and Family Guy (listen to what you're saying, the show is pretty recent). Also you say you've only played it for 20 minutes? No offense, but you can't judge the entire game based on that! The game gets alot funnier after that, and although the puzzles left something to be desired, it's a very enjoyable game, for some people. DOTT is better but they're so totally different games.

I am sorry it was my fault for attacking the game so blatantly...I will give it a second chance...I guess I just had a crappy day yesterday.

I guess I fall into the minority of people who actually like Sam & Max more than Day of the Tentacle! 8-)

Anyways, I'm sorry that you're not enjoying S&M. I played it when I was very, very young; in fact, I think it was my first LucasArts adventure game. Perhaps that's the reason I look at it so fondly.

I remember seeing a demo of Sam and Max for the first time. I didn't have a PC at the time, I was purely Amiga back then. Walking the narrow path.

But anyway, I had seen Day of the Tentacle before that, and was anxiously waiting for an Amiga version of that game. Didn't come of course, which I still find strange. It may have ended up on a lot of discs, but the Amiga should have been able to cope with it. But I guess they just gave the Amiga up after Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which suffered even more than Monkey Island 2 for not having a harddrive. Amigas with a HD wasn't that common back then.

But to the point. When I first saw Sam and Max, I thought it was a childs game, what with the cute graphics and such. But what got me the most was the interface, which I really didn't like at the time. I thought, "hell, that looks like a Sierra game!". Although I was a big fan of certain Sierra games, Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry were among my favourites, I didn't really like it when they switched to the icon-based interface. And when my favourite adventuregame developer went the same way, I was not impressed to say the least.

The point is, when I tried that demo so long ago, I wasn't really impressed with the game. I completed the game for the very first time 2 years ago or so, and thought it was among the greatest adventures ever. I also didn't get to play DOTT before 2-3 years ago either, and I thought that was even better. Sam and Max have a genuine feel among the LucasArts games, as much as the others do. Although I think DOTT is a better game, Sam and Max is worth a good chance from anyone. And no, it's not overrated. It's humour isn't bad. It's very good and genuine, but not for everyone. That's up to the individual.

When did DOTT become more critically acclaimed than Sam And Max? I remember all the magazines raving about Samnmax issue after issue back in the day, hardly saw any info about DOTT. It's probably because time travel is more intresting then searching for a soggy bigfoot, but Samnmax is more entertaining IMO.

Which is more entertaining is probably a personal thing (in my case, I also find Sam and Max more entertaining at least from a character and humor standpoint) but from a gameplay and puzzle design standpoint DOTT is definitely a superior game. I'm still impressed by how cleanly they pulled off the multiple characters element (which had of course been done before in MM but due to the lack of choice in DOTT I feel it was tighter) and by how well the puzzles took full advantage of the time travel element.