It seems like a lifetime ago that the wise cracking canine shamus in the suit and the hyper kinetic, ultra-violent rabbit first made an impact on the gaming world. Luckily for us, after the proposed sequel was cancelled, Sam and Max found another way to reach their audience. It started as episodic seasons, of which Save the World was the first. You get Six episodes in total, and while they aren’t perfect, they certainly do enough to bring a smile to the faces of fans of the dangerous duo.
Sam and Max, as we all should know by now, are Freelance
police who undertake missions given out by the commissioner. Sam is the
thoughtful one, often pointing out the lunacy of what is happening around him,
while Max is borderline insane and always looking for things to shoot, break or
eat. The duo is joined in their adventures by Jimmy the rat- a low level fence
who lives in their office, Bosco the shop owner and Sybil the woman of ever
changing career.
The game controls have moved from the PC (and Wii) versions
and now players directy control Sam. As he wanders around, things of interest
highlight and can then be interacted with. This is still very much a point and
click adventure with the character models and objects now in 3D.
It's somewhat of a relief to find that the writing and voice
work retains much of its excellent quality. The humour and style that the
original game was well known for is upheld admirably here. Some of the lines
that our two heroes come out with are absolute genius and will have you
laughing away on many occasions. The six episodes all have their own theme and
range from average to excellent in terms of humour and general madness. Abe
Lincoln must die stands out as a brilliant piece of social satire while Reality
2.0 might strike a little too close to home for many players.
As these episodes where released as episodic content on the
PC and are self-contained three hour adventures there is a certain amount of
repetition in location. Most episodes require you to visit Sam and Max's room,
Bosco's Inconvenience store and Sybil's office. You will then typically have
one or two other locations to explore relating to the episode you are playing.
This isn't ideal and certainly not on a par with the original games layout but
certainly shouldn't put you off.
On the whole, the puzzles are a mix of the logical and
lateral thinking variety. Quite often you will have to be in the mindset of the
game world to work out how to solve a certain situation. This works fine as
most gamers will soon get the drift of how they should be thinking. There is a
couple of instances where solutions are quite obscure though, our advice is
simply to make sure you look everywhere and try everything. Even so, it's
likely that players will stumble a few times and find themselves frustrated
just that little bit too often.
Overall, We are really happy to see Sam and Max make it onto
the Switch as this, and the games that followed it show enough of the greatness
of the original. We can only hope that when the final of the three seasons has
been released on the Switch we might get some news about further adventures.
Overall 7/10
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