The International House of Mojo

After playing Moai Better Blues it is becoming increasingly clear that Telltale is taking the second series of Sam & Max in a quirkier direction than the first one. How you feel about that probably depends on what you expect your favorite Freelance Police to be. I would argue that both Hit the Road and Season One (and indeed the TV series) might have been a bit less non-sequitur than the comic books, so if you prefer the latter, this is definitely a good thing.

Having saved... "saved..." a possessed Santa in Ice Station Santa, Sam and Max return to Straight St. to find Sybil chased by the... Bermuda Triangle... Yeah, things are getting funky, and I am just going to assume we'll continue seeing strange beings going amok around the duo's office building throughout the season.

Not surprisingly the first puzzle revolves around stopping the triangle, a shape which soon is revealed to be a portal to Easter Island, or, as it is, the place where the butt of earth's every unsolved mystery reside. Yeah. Possessed Santa is slowly starting to seem fairly normal at this point.

Anyway, I don't want to give away a whole lot more -- just know the game is very quirky, equally funny to the last game, and also quite short. I mean, we'd be fairly far through the game had I gone much further in detailing the story.

That, in itself, is the first problem with the game; it seems fairly short even for an episodic game. Ice Station Santa managed to "drag" (not meant in a bad way here) out for a pretty decent amount of time despite the relative lack of locations, and while Moai Better Blues is about the same size physically, it's lighter on the puzzle difficulty.

I could certainly live with the shorter length, as I have more important things to do with my time, like watching TV. What's worse than the size, though, is that most everything seems like a set-up for the rest of the season. Bosco? Flint? Stinky? They're entertaining, but they all feel like the beginning of a punch-line that will be delivered later on. This might end up being a good thing when the whole season is played out in its entirety, but also impossible to judge until... Well, you know when.

Moai Better Blues is certainly not a bad game. For the most part it's up there with the best of the series when you focus solely on the humor and the quirkiness. Being a discriminating Mojo reader, however, you can't help but nit-pick, and the overall gaming experience just isn't quite as [insert favorite smiley face here] as Ice Station Santa was.

Still, I have a feeling the best is yet to come.

Remi Olsen
10th January, 2008.

Pros: Great humor. Quirkier than the previous games.
Cons: Short. Feels like a set-up more than an individual game.