Most people don’t know that Sam & Max first started life as a comic book. Or rather, it started as a doodle made by Steve Purcell’s brother, who later sold the idea to his older sibling. The dynamic duo of humanoid dog-detective and anarchistic lagomorph would make their debut in the pages of funny pages all the way back in 1987. Most of those books are sadly out of print and demand steep prices on digital resellers. Surfin' the Highway can be found on Amazon for a reasonable $164.51 at the time of this writing. I bring all this up to emphasize just how much all of this is eclipsed by the video games. Lucasarts’ Hit the Road from 1993 is still considered a classic to this day with the subsequent Telltale games offering a definite adaption of these chaotic characters. Bill Farmer may be a voice acting hero, but most folks hear David Nowlin when envisioning the mystery-solving mutt. Even after Telltale imploded, this incarnation of the two still live on via VR spin-offs and HD remakes of their titles. As is the case with Save the World.
Released in 2007 via the typical Telltale episodic adventure model, Save the World offered fans a new adventure featuring these two furry freaks. Considering the dup hadn’t been on active duty since their short-lived cartoon from 1997, any new adventure was appreciated. Obviously they did something right since this spawned two more sequel series, Beyond Time and Space & The Devil’s Playhouse. Perhaps we’ll get around to accessing those two in the future, but first my quick thoughts on Hit the Road.
What? Feels only right to give that game the once over before checking out the new stuff. Long story short, Sam and Max are freelance police officers from the big apple tasked with finding runaway circus freaks. Said task sends them all across the country in their tricked out Desoto, pointing and clicking everything in sight whenever not tussling with a deranged country music star from Wales. Did I mention this franchise is really freak’n weird? In the end our heroes succeed in outwitting the blimey bastard, finding the freaks, and destroying most of the civilized world via Bigfoot voodoo. In other words; a typical day at the office for these idiots. The graphics are charming, the voice acting is top notch, and the story is well paced. Really the only blight is its gameplay. Like most point and click titles, the player really has to put a lot of thought and time into things. Some combinations are painfully obvious. Others are so ludicrous that you’d think the developers are high. At one point you have to get a mood ring out of the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota using a golf ball scooper, fish magnet, and Jessie Jame’s severed hand. What were they on back in the 90s?
With all of that insanity in mind, how does the follow-up hold up?
Taking place over six episodes, Sam (Nowlin) and Max (William Kasten) are tasked with several cases centered around hypnosis. The methods used involve former child stars, the love child of Ellen and Pinkie Pie, Godfather by way of Build-A-Bear, a giant animatronic Abraham Lincoln, VR Chat version 1.0, and gay pride. Yup, the strange tone is still alive, sweaty, and shooting at everything that moves. It’s all unapologetically ridiculous yet strangely well written. All the means of hypnosis sound oddly realistic. Think about it. How obsessed are we with fallen celebrities, scandals, politics, or the Internet? Really, the villains don’t need to try too hard to mindwash the masses. Yet they do and it’s hilarious to see how. Equally as funny is Sam and Max trying to stop them.
Once again these are point and click adventures, so it’s a matter of players combining random crap to screw with everybody else. Everybody else including a paranoid convenience store owner / “genius” inventor, those aforementioned former child stars, a former tattoo artist with a rotating resume, a rat, and a cult leader whose whole shtick is ‘rainbows’. This is Hugh Bliss (David Boyll), cult leader and living colony of space bacteria. As far as villains go, he is immensely entertaining. Dude is all sunshine, puppies, unicorns to a point of extreme parody. By the end you’ll wanna pummel him as badly as Sam does. Max, on the other hand, seems enamored with this oddball to a point. Remember that this rambunctious little rabbit is the living embodiment of id. Which makes sense given future installments. No wonder he beat out robo Abe Lincoln in the election.
Speaking of that, Chapter 4 sees a shadowy cabal of rich jerks trying to control a puppet President who keeps issuing random proclamations and has a hard time understanding any language, English especially. I’m not saying Sam & Max predicted the (at the time of writing) current administration, but they totally did. The only difference is that this Commander in Chief wanted to introduce mandatory gun registration. How sad is it that this is the least realistic plot point? This is why I say the story is cleverly written despite weird asides like our heroes having to compete on Embarrassing Idol or driving to the moon with only their car. Apparently this universe’s moon runs on Power Rangers logic. It even comes complete with a lavish lair for the ultra-colorful villains. Come to think of it, seeing the dog and rabbit annoy Lord Zedd into submission would be a real hoot. Wouldn’t be any weirder than Sam playing Texas Hold’em with Brock Sampson, Claptrap, and Ash Williams.
Point is, Sam & Max is the revitalization this series needed. It sticks to the spirit of the original games while properly escalating both the plot and humor. Better yet, the gameplay is challenging but in a way that feels rewarding. One can easily solve the puzzles without feeling like a lunatic. All of the characters are charming, the world is bonkers, yet the writing is way wittier than it has any right to be. Further helping matters is how nice the revamped version looks. The original’s lighting and colors felt flat, plus the lip-syncing was worse than a poorly dubbed Godzilla movie. Characters would spit out dialogue while their mouths flapped in the vein attempt of matching the words. Granted, all Telltale games were like that, so it's not like these were an outlier. When all is said and done, Save the World is a ton of fun and comes highly recommended. Here’s hoping we can check out the other two entries in the future. Assuming there’s still a way to buy it. Max and Sam did kind’a destroy the Internet after all. Maybe somebody saved it to a floppy disk…
