The International House of Mojo

Please, please, PLEASE tell me I'm not the only person who (again) repeatedly used the "Do you have any..." line when talking to Bosco.

"Do you have any... fine leather jackets?"

I'm sure I'm not the only person that found it, but no one else has mentioned it yet...

The Midtown Cowboy stuff is worth the price of admission and makes this a better game than the first. Very clever stuff.

nice review man

Lovely review!

Hey I remember when I wrote that. Good times.

Good review. My only gripe with the game is that the puzzles seem to be getting easier instead of harder (the game is very linear), although it had me stumped once.

It's really funny though, with such gems as 'The drawers are just painted on to make it look interesting' (can't remember if that was already in Culture Shock, but it made me laugh anyway), and the part where Sam and Max refer to the Internet petition had me in stitches as well. Favourite moment of the game would have to be Midtown Cowboys though, with the awesome Featherly, and the catchy tune - 'They're probably hiding a cow'.

Regarding the second episode being easier, it's worth noting that Telltale officially ranks Culture Shock a 4/6 in difficulty and Situation: Comedy a 3/6. That means that the second episode being easier, though probably not intentional, is recognized.

Personally, like I said in the review, I thought the challenge level was pretty much the same. I think we'll see the real difference a little bit further down.

What do you mean by 'linear' exactly? There's a certain narrative to be told, as in any adventure game. But things really open up once inside the studio...

Well, it seems that you can do lots of different stuff in the TV studios, but it comes down to that you can do three things in a different order. So while that part of the game is in a way non-linear, it's not enough to impress me. The overall story is still 'hang around at the office - go to TV studio and do some stuff - game ends'.

However, I don't want to sound overly critical, and I do realise that what I said is just a consequence of the episodic format, which I still whole-heartedly support. In other words, I love this game!

Well, you say "that part of the game" is non-linear, but "that part of the game" is basically the whole game. I thought the episode was pretty impressively non-linear, considering that the three things you're referring to are in fact the meat of the episode. Saying that the game basically comes down to "hang around at the office - go to TV studio and do some stuff - game ends" is like saying "Monkey Island is just do stuff on Melee Island, do some stuff on Monkey Island and rescue the governor - game ends." You can't really talk about it in such broad terms.

Definitely, the episode is on a much smaller scale than Monkey Island, but within its own scope I think it's sufficiently non-linear.

Yeah, I wrote that out in totally the wrong way. What I actually meant was...

*SPOILERS*
The game basically holds your hand very much. You cannot participate in the singing contest without first having done both the cooking show and the quiz. The only thing that you can really *choose* to do first or later, is taping the comedy show, and the photo with Bliss (which is a very minor part of the game).
*SPOILERS END HERE*

Of course this is, to an extent, an issue with all adventure games, but it becomes very apparent in an episodic game, where you have to cram a lot of stuff into a short game, which leaves very little room for non-linearity.

But that's just a very minor gripe, and I am sure I'm one of the few people who even mention it, since the game is so much fun that you hardly notice that you don't really solve all that many puzzles. I just don't want to give off the impression that I don't love the game, but there is always something to improve on, in any game.

You can't COMPLETE the singing contest, but I'm sure you can have a go without completing those two. But you need something from both to win Embarrassing Idol.

Oh, and:
"Mixnmojo reviews are never late, dear Lucasfans, nor are they early. They arrive precisely when they mean to!"