The International House of Mojo

A review by Udvarnoky, who does in fact do other things besides news updates. Not really.

The first Sam & Max episode had no small hurdle to overcome. Being a sequel of sorts to a classic game and facing thirteen years worth of anticipation from a skeptical fan base, it had a lot to live up to, but most agree that it did the seemingly impossible and stood as both a worthy follow-up to Hit the Road and a faithful representation of its comic-based characters. Now that we know what Telltale's capable of, they have to do it again five more times while keeping up with (and hopefully improving) the level of quality set by Culture Shock. Does the second episode indicate that they're on that track? Yes, I think so.

The story of Situation: Comedy kicks off a month or so after the events of the first episode (which is occasionally referenced), and like the ending of that game hinted, finds Sam & Max investigating the motives of a motherly talk show host, Myra Stump, who's holding her audience as well as the studio's crew hostage at local television station WARP. Besides a few things that need to be taken care of in their neighborhood which involves recurring characters Bosco (now with a questionably accurate British disguise), Sybil (who's changed careers yet again), and the mischievous local rats, Sam & Max spend the better part of the game on the various sets of WARP.

You see, in order to prove to the darling hawk of daytime talk that they're worthy of a guest spot on her show, they must first acquire a certain degree of fame that only haphazard appearances on various derivative television programs can generate. And with the director desperate for bodies now that her crew and actors are trapped on Myra's set, Sam and Max find themselves starring in a low-rate sitcom (which was my personal favorite segment of the game), perverting the Laws of God and Man on a bachelor-themed cooking series, blowing their chance at millions as contestants on a rigged game show, and manipulating the judges of an American Idol style singing contest (in a puzzle that's reminiscent, but not a ripoff, of the spitting and diving contests from the Monkey Island games) before they can finally reach the climactic confrontation with Myra.

These various TV show parodies are rife with possibilities for great Sam & Max lines and gags, and I'm happy to report that the team does not let the opportunity slip by. The game is genuinely funny and the overall quality of the writing remains consistently high. Kudos to Dave Grossman and Brendan Ferguson for another job well done in this area. And, as is the case with most great adventure games, Situation: Comedy has a number of great little moments and nice details that I won't ruin here, but are worth replaying the game and exhausting every dialog tree to find.

And as for the season-wide story arc? Like the last episode Situation: Comedy ends conclusively but also with a tease for what's in store for episode 3. We can begin to see a bigger story build with each passing episode, and it's that aspect more than anything that has me excited to see the rest of the season despite the generally self-contained nature of each individual game.

The presentation is solid. There are about the same number of new environments and characters as there were in the first episode, and the art design continues to please greatly. The environments are wonderful and richly detailed, and the character animation is expressive and just a joy to watch. The game also continues to show off the storytelling capabilities of Telltale's engine with its well-orchestrated camera cuts and swooping pans (which simply wouldn't be possible in a 2D game), as well as some impeccably timed dialog delivery (which often is the difference between a joke being funny or not).

The voice acting for the new characters is above average, and the recurring actors are at least as good as they were in episode one. It should be noted that the voice of Max has been recast, though I predict some won't even notice, and in my opinion the differences I can hear are improvements. Jared Emerson-Johnson's jazzy soundtrack which once again features live instruments is simply awesome, and I noticed lovely scene-specific compositions that really add an extra "oomph" to certain situations.

Both length and difficulty, the two grievances most loudly voiced against the first episode, are more or less the same level in Situation: Comedy. I really think that the length of the episodes at this point is a non-issue unless you're plain against the episodic model in principle; the gameplay time matches what Telltale told us to expect, and the price is right. Unless later episodes dramatically shorten, it's really just a matter of getting used to a different structure for a game. As for the difficulty of the puzzles, it's true, there's no real departure from Culture Shock (which is not to say there won't be by the season's end). Something I think more open-minded people will be surprised to find, though, is that this really isn't a detriment to the game at all. The episode is utterly enjoyable due to the strengths above and while the puzzles won't have hardcore adventure gamers stumped for days, they are fun, logical, and well designed, which are important things that people who complain about the difficulty often forget to mention.

If those aren't the kind of factors that make or break a game for you, there's happily little to complain about here. My main criticism of this game would be the same I've had with all of Telltale's games: While the production values are generally very high, there's a slight level of technical polish LucasArts-era adventures spoiled us with that is missing. There are some awkward music cuts and overlaps, as well as occasions where the soundtrack drowns out the dialog. Note that this is not a problem with either individual element, but rather of their flow together. Whether it's the fault of sound design or simply a lack of time, it's something to point out.

Lip-synching, though not a huge deal, remains so-so and is more problematic in some cases than in others. I suspect that all these things are the result of very tight schedules, and I suspect they are things which will gradually improve over time (and indeed, the improvement in Telltale's games since Out from Boneville is noticeable). On my first playthrough I did experience one bug near the end of the game that made me unable to leave a closeup of Max's face, but it was nothing a quick reload didn't fix (hurrah for the auto-save feature), and I hear it isn't present in the Telltale release (I played via Gametap).

The one other thing I'll add is that I hope things get even more insane from here on out. Hypnotized former child stars and theater-trained chickens are awesome and certainly appropriate to Sam & Max, but I hope the craziness enters the realm of the comics before it's all over. It's tremendously impressive that Telltale can get these little gems out on a monthly basis, and if the rest of the season can keep up with the quality maintained by the first two episodes, Season One is going to be quite the accomplishment indeed.

4 out of 5 skulls

Pros: Still funny, still looks great and still fun to play.

Cons: Some very slight technical issues could be smoothed over.

A review by Udvarnoky Jason, who does in fact do other things besides news updates. Not really.

This article was originally published on January 16th, 2007. Most older Mojo articles were lost, and we've been forced to resort to The Wayback Machine to revive them. Unfortunately, the layout and media of the original article is often not salvageable, so if you want an idea of how this feature looked in its original form, check out this snapshot.

Oh yeah, and here's the original news post, since we have trouble linking those correctly, too. ¬¬