Sam & Max - Culture Shock
Sam & Max - Culture Shock is the first installment in a series of episodic adventure games based on the popular comic book characters. The downloadable episodes are available to PC users via Telltale Games or through GameTap. Set in New York City and starring the anthropomorphic dog Sam and his hyperactive rabbit partner Max, the pair of freelance police investigate crimes in the name of, well, boredom. There's no shortage of wit in this game and you can expect to laugh on more than one occasion.
After recovering their stolen phone from a no-good rat (literally, a rat took it), Sam and Max discover that a group of former child stars have been committing crimes around town. The little vandals are relentlessly promoting ocular fitness guru Brady Culture and his eye exercise videos. But why? After stopping by a psychotherapy clinic/tattoo parlor and Bosco's Inconvenience store, Sam and Max begin to unravel the mysterious mystery behind the strange happenings.
Sam & Max - Culture Shock is an extraordinarily classy and humorous game. The visuals look like they were culled from the pages of a comic book yet still have a fluid 3D feel. The interface is pleasingly simple: just point-and-click, no icons or cursor changes to worry about. It all boils down to a game that is largely dialogue driven with a few adventure-style puzzles patched in to keep things moving along.
Analysis: Modern-made adventure games are usually a hit or miss for me. Some are wonderfully imaginative, deep, thoughtful or just plain engaging, while others miss the mark entirely. Sam & Max - Culture Shock is easily one of the best adventure games I've played this year, largely due to the extreme dose of wit injected into each and every scene. Conversations with characters are hilarious and I found myself investigating every branch of the dialogue tree just to see what crazy things would pop up next. Roughly 90% of what you examine in the game is just for fun, but I was clicking on everything I could to see what Sam and Max had to say.
Sam & Max - Culture Shock offers great dialogue, excellent voice acting and more humor than you can shake a long thin piece of wood at. The final product is worth its weight in rabbit fur. Maybe even more. Future episodes will be released each month, so keep an eye out for more adventuring goodness.
If you don't have a GameTap membership you can sign up for a free 2-week trial and play the full version of Sam & Max for free. You can also download the demo from the Telltale Games website.
Cheers to Gino for reminding us about this one!
Wow, a new stylesheet...
But SEVENTY-TWO MEGABYTES???
Oh god...I hate dial-up
It seems that GameTap isn't available outside the US :/
Looks fun, but I don't have a credit card lying about. Ah, well.
I played the original a few years ago and adored it, I nearly cried when the sequel was cancelled, I rejoiced when these games were announced and pre-ordered ASAP.
When I finally downloaded the game, I loved it so much that I played it twice. I laughed at least every minute throughout the game, loved all the characters and felt that the puzzles were a pretty good difficulty, particularly for the first episode. (My favourite thing about them is that they made sense). Overall, I thoroughly recommend buying this game, even if you have only a mild interest in adventure games.
Interesting... but Bone - http://www.boneville.com/ - is still the best adventure of this type ever...
nooo. Gametap not available in UK!
=weeps= man, I was gonna look into that to get me through xmas, too. crap. now what am I gonna do.
=commence extra wailin, now he knows hes being denied teh Sam and Max=
Heff and Irene - You are aware that you don't need to get Gametap to play the game, right? You can just download straight from here: http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax/
The only adantage that Gametap gives you is that you can play the game 15 days earlier than you can through the Telltale site.
Sam and Max is always awesome. It's a pity they don't get the deals that would allow them to make more stuff like this.
btw, isn't it your birthday today jay?
Happy B-Day!
Out of interest, does anyone know if it's the same voice actors as the original? Also, is it keyboard controlled or fully point and click? The 3D Monkey Island almost ruined my appreciation of the Monkey Island games, so I don't want to do the same for Sam and Max!
Man, I did LOVE Sam and Max though. Doug the Mole Man! The marrow that looked like that country singer's head! Hahah. I should play it again. :)
Heh heh! That was awesome! I played the demo, because my Gametap trial expired 3 days ago. Quite funny stuff in there, can't believe it took me that long to beat it though...so easy if you stop to think about it XD
Hmm. No, the voice actors are most definitely not the same. Sam's voice actually kind of disappoints, but the humor is still there, and the lines are still good. My download took 4 minutes to complete. That's a bit insane. Anyway, the original Sam 'N' Max game is still one of my favorite games of all times. The humor has never gotten old, even after 10 or so years. I haven't played this one yet, but I'm about to, and I'm hoping against hope that it doesn't disappoint. It's exactly like when a great movie comes out, and then months later, you hear about a sequel, and you want SO BAD for it to be just as good as the original, because the original was so incredibly good, and yet... Star Wars: Episode I, anybody?
Anyway, I'll post more after actually playing it.
-D
Hmm. No, the voice actors are most definitely not the same. Sam's voice actually kind of disappoints, but the humor is still there, and the lines are still good. My download took 4 minutes to complete. That's a bit insane. Anyway, the original Sam 'N' Max game is still one of my favorite games of all times. The humor has never gotten old, even after 10 or so years. I haven't played this one yet, but I'm about to, and I'm hoping against hope that it doesn't disappoint. It's exactly like when a great movie comes out, and then months later, you hear about a sequel, and you want SO BAD for it to be just as good as the original, because the original was so incredibly good, and yet... Star Wars: Episode I, anybody?
Anyway, I'll post more after actually playing it.
-D
Great graphics, but I've hit a glitch where I cant get away from the dialogue prompts. Any ideas?
Glad to see this game pop up here, since it's not what I'd normally think of as "casual" gameplay. My good friend does the sound and music for the Telltale games (Sam & Max, the Bone game mentioned above), and I think they're putting out some excellent stuff. Also, if you don't want to buy the game in installments, you can wait until all the episodes come out (sometime next summer, I think), and just buy them at once, on disc, without having to take up the HD space.
Re: this game, the voice actors are different, but the S&M humor has definitely stayed the saem. :)
oh! this was reviewed in a magazine my son gets. We were reading about it just yesterday. It looks totally awsome. But the review didn't say it was available online. Thanks so much for posting this, I think it will definately be on kiddos christmas list!
Demo was too short but that's the norm. Looks very good, kinda resource heavy though.
The humor is a bit on the sophmoric side, I think Grim Fandango & Journeyman 2 were much sharper. Can't argue about the price for the whole game from the creators' site. Bone 1 & 2 look very good too, I played the demos a while ago.
Gametap is not available in my country. :(
I have played the free trial version and yes i will be getting the full, this is a stunning game so much fun to play.
Loved it, 8$ is also not much, tried to buy the full version... but dont have credit card, and they don't seem to take "bank account transfer" i most times do...
I just remembere that it was your birthday during this post. I just randomly remembered it a bit ago. Sorry. Happy belated birthday -MANAX
When I free download, it only lets me play the beginning office level. Am I doing something wrong?
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