Sam & Max Save the World

Holy jumping mother o' god in a side-car with chocolate jimmies and a lobster bib, it has been 14 years since Telltale Games resurrected Sam & Max as an episodic series. To put that into perspective, that's longer than the hiatus between the 1993 point and click classic Sam & Max Hit the Road and the 2006 reboot. I don't know about you, but that makes me feel really old. Thankfully, my fears of fleeting mortality subsided while playing the brand-new remastered version of Sam & Max: Save the World, the six-episode series that just recently launched on the Switch. It's a great looking new collection that once again proves that even though the games may be 14-years-old, the jokes remain timeless.

Originally released in monthly installments, Sam & Max: Save the World was something of a test run for Telltale Games. This episodic approach was new for the gaming industry and publishers were dubious that consumers would stay invested in slow-drip releases. But despite the skepticism, the format worked for Telltale, setting them apart from the competition and ultimately allowing the adventure game company to create high-profile releases based on The Walking Dead, Batman and Game of Thrones.

While Telltale may have gone out of business in 2018, Dan Connors and a number of other former employees created new studio named Skunkape Games. The result is a remastered version of Sam & Max: Save the World, the first of three seasons that revolved around a canine private investigator and his psychopathic rabbity-thing sidekick. Together, these freelance police officers solve crimes, save the world and put up with their paranoid and fickle friends, all while cracking jokes and getting into trouble.

It's that getting-into-trouble thing that Sam & Max are exceptionally good at. Simple cases have a funny way of spiraling out of control, to the point where our heroes end up joining the mafia and even starring in their own television sitcom. This season also introduces us to a bunch of creepy former child stars, a cult leader, an enigmatic color worshipper, virtual reality and even the walking, talking statue of Abe Lincoln. All this may seem a bit random at first, but it won't take long before the freelance police start connecting the dots to reveal the bigger, more sinister threat.

Although they are packed with jokes and hilarious dialog options, the episodes themselves won't take you more than a couple hours to complete. A lot of the reason for this is because the few puzzles that populate each episode are fairly straight-forward and nowhere near as deep as the classic point and clickers you likely grew up playing. There are only a few items to pick up and you'll never have to combine them, so even if you have to trial and error your way through an especially obtuse puzzle, there's comfort in knowing that it won't take very long to try out all of the solutions.

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One of the things I discovered while playing through the episodes one right after another is that Sam & Max: Save the World was not designed to be binged. This is a series that benefits from the slow-drip release schedule, if only because it allows the audience to forget about some of the repetitive and on-running jokes. Sybil's search for the perfect job is one of those gags that works better when there's a little time between the adventures, especially since the game forces you to indulge her nonsense in every episode. The same is true of Bosco's constantly changing (and rarely funny) disguises, something that I remember enjoying a lot more when the episodes were being released monthly.

It also doesn't help that I went into this remastered collection having already played through both of the other two seasons. That's not to say that Sam & Max: Save the World is a bad season, but it pales in comparison to what they did in Beyond Time and Space and The Devil's Playhouse. These seasons benefited from the years of experience and added know-how of working on episodic games, and it shows in the puzzle designs and story construction. There are parts of Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space that are so clever that they made me reevaluate how I looked at point and click adventure games. Sadly, there's nothing in this first season that rises to that level. These six episodes feel simplistic and almost quaint in comparison, which makes going back a little tougher than I was expecting.

But even if it can't stack up against the future seasons, Sam & Max: Save the World is still incredibly funny from start to finish. In fact, I would argue that it's worth playing just for the virtual reality episode, which pokes fun at everything from Mario to Castlevania to World of Warcraft. It's an instant classic with more laugh out loud moments that anything else I've played all year. The truth is, the entire season is full of must-see moments that all lead to a truly epic conclusion. And with the improved visuals and a surprisingly intuitive control scheme, this Switch version is the best way to play Sam & Max: Save the World.