Link: http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax

I had purchased Sam & Max Season One back in 2008 when it was featured as a weekend deal on Steam, though I wasn’t really that interested in playing it then. I was, at the time, a junkie for cheap video games. In fact, I enjoyed buying video games more than I actually liked playing them. I couldn’t help myself, every time I saw a deal on Steam, I bought it, not even caring what it was. All that ended when I purchased the game Mount and Blade, tried it, and realized that I hated it. From then on I was more conservative about the video games that I purchased.

As I was saying, I had six games from the Sam & Max series sitting in my account, and I don’t know that I ever intended to play them. I never played the original Sam & Max game from the 90s, and to be perfectly honest, I really don’t like comedy in video games. I mean, some tongue in cheek humor is okay, but I had heard that Sam & Max was basically laugh out loud comedy. That’s part of the reason I had the games for almost two years before sitting down to play them.

[[img src=“http://www.mobygames.com/images/i/07/16/381766.jpeg” link=“http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/sam-max-episode-1-culture-shock/screenshots/gameShotId,191526/" alt=“Sam & Max Screenshot” format=“right,320px” | Who knew a wisecracking bunny (Max) and anthropomorphic dog (Sam) could be so funny?]]As the title of this post suggests, I found the games to be a breath of fresh air. I actually installed Sam & Max 101: Culture Shock several months ago, with the intent of at least trying it out, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I fired it up. I was laughing out loud right away. There I was, introduced to two absolutely hilarious furry animals. I found Sam to have the dry and self-centered sense of humor that some would think of as ignorance, but the keen observer would recognize as cognizant wit. And then there was Max, I didn’t even know what to make of Max the first time I heard him speak. All I did know was that I couldn’t stop laughing at the wisecracks that he was making. Yes, I was very surprised, and I’m not ashamed of the fact that I was laughing more loudly than I would during any sitcom.

For those that don’t know, these recent Sam & Max games are being developed by Tell Tale Games and released in an episodic manner. That means that instead of developing and releasing one game, the game is produced as a season, the first season has six episodes. The episodes are released monthly, and when you buy a “subscription” you get each game as it is released. Of course, purchasing past seasons gets you the games right away. Certainly this is an interesting way of publishing games, and quite frankly, it works for Sam & Max.

Sam & Max is an adventure series, so the games mostly focus on plot and puzzle solving. Each episode from season one was about three hours long, more or less depending on how long it takes the player to figure out the various puzzles and challenges. None of the puzzles were ridiculously difficult, but some were more obvious than others. These are not the type of game where you give up, and follow a walk-through to complete. No, they actually make sense, despite the comic world where a dog and a bunny interact with humans, as if there was nothing unusual about it.

I played an episode a day for six days, and I was laughing all the way to the end. Admittedly, it wasn’t quite as funny near the end, and it was starting to feel a bit tedious, but I think that was more because I was playing them all at once, I think a month apart would be a very good spacing to play each episode. It wasn’t all funny, however. I hated the character Bosco almost right away, he was funny the first time that Sam and Max interacted with him, but the character got old fast, and was more annoying than anything by the final episode. But hey, nothing’s perfect.

This is the type of game that you can play with your significant other, one person takes the controls, but both discuss possible solutions to the puzzles.

The narrative of the game had all the nonsense that you might expect in a world with anthropomorphic animals. Half way through Max actually becomes the president of the united states. Each episode is an individual story unto itself, but the whole season cumulates as a persistent world, meaning that the events of previous episodes are often referred to, or even part of, later episodes, with the final episode revealing what was behind all the mayhem previously encountered.

I was pleasantly surprised by this game, and I look forward to playing seasons two and three, and any future seasons. If you like video games and you like to laugh, give it a try. Sam & Max 104: Abe Lincoln Must Die is free, so there is no reason not to try it, you might find yourself in a world of laughter.

I was first introduced to Bioshock by a friend of mine, who was telling me how this game was going to have realistic water simulation. He sent me a link to the trailer video, which showed me a violent, yet exhilarating underwater world. I played the demo shortly after that, but my PC wasn’t up to spec, and the game ran choppy, so I knew it wouldn’t be a game I would be playing any time soon. In 2008 the game was featured as a weekend deal on Steam, and I purchased it. That was when I was introduced to the world of Rapture. Still I was using the same computer, so it wasn’t until I swapped out my video card that the game really performed well.

Bioshock 2 is not a direct sequel to the original game, but it is still set in the underwater city of Rapture. This time around you play as one of the drill-endowed defenders of the Little Sisters, a Big Daddy. Before the game was released there was a lot of concern about this, being that the Big Daddies of the first game were basically mindless, slow moving, but tough to kill denizens of the underwater world. However, this game is not going to disappoint.

First of all, when we talk about the Big Daddy being mindless, it really isn’t much different from the main character, Jack, of the original Bioshock. Because in the first game, other than Jack saying, “They told me, son, you’re special. You were born to do great things. You know what? They were right," during the intro sequence, he didn’t have much of a personality throughout the game. So there really isn’t any difference in this game, you basically do what your told, and never say anything to anyone.

As for Big Daddies being slow moving, well you’re not a traditional Big Daddy, you’re called Delta, and you move fast, and attack hard. One thing you are missing, however, is toughness. You are easy to kill, very easy, especially at the beginning of the game before you get the upgrades necessary to survive. This isn’t too big a deal, though, since you still get resurrected in Vita-Chambers every time you die, so you won’t be out of the battle for long. By the end of the game, you’ll be tough enough, that you probably won’t get killed at all, and, in fact, you’ll be able to take out most enemies, including Big Daddies, with a simple plasmid-and-attack combo, such as freeze then drill drive.

With that said, combat is the weakest part of the game. Most of the weapons are useless, and the only reason to equip them, is if you run out of ammo for the better weapons. Which you’re going to do a lot at the beginning of the game. The beginning of the game is definitely the toughest part. Ammo is sparse, cash to buy ammo with is even sparser, and EVE, the substance that powers plasmids, is in short supply. That’s only the first few levels though, later in the game, you won’t even need to buy anything, you find plenty of supplies. Still combat is never really that fun, and it can get very annoying and aggravating at times. The same was true in the first game, so I don’t know that any better could be expected in this game.

The world of Rapture is not like other shooters where you play through a level, instead you are put into a level, and you’ll go back and forth between different areas as your tasks change. Enemies spawn periodically, so as you walk around the level you will constantly be fighting. This only adds to the annoyance of combat.


What the game does well, is environment. I remember as a child sometimes I would make-believe about living in an underwater world, pretending that the porch in my backyard was a docking bay leading to the depths of the ocean. This game lets you live that type of childhood fantasy. You are basically put in an underwater world that has spent years in disrepair, with all the leaks and floods that you might expect. The same as in the first game, only this time, since you are in a Big Daddy suit, you actually spend some time walking around on the ocean floor. Quite frankly, it’s an exciting world to spend time in.

As for the narrative, you will learn a little more about the world of Rapture, and even learn some things about the events of the first game, but overall it’s nothing spectacular. You’ll face several decisions throughout the game, which have an effect on the ending video that you see. I personally played the good route, and got a good ending. If you want to see the alternative endings you can always play through the game again, or, if you’re playing the PC version of the game, just open up the game directory folder and watch them. If that isn’t an option, you can always do an internet search. This is a game that you might want to play twice, but not twice in the same year, so seeing the alternate endings by another means is probably something you will want to do.

I’ve mentioned that many of the weapons are useless, and I want to discuss the plasmids as well. The plasmids are basically the magical abilities that the player has. Most of them are the same as the ones found in the first game, and most of them are useless as well. I really only used one plasmid, the freeze plasmid, because it makes it easier to attack the enemies. Some of the plasmids are required to progress through the game, such as the electro-bolt and the telekinesis plasmids, but in general they don’t help you with combat. You also upgrade your character with tonics, you can equip quite a lot of these and some of them provide useful abilities.

Like the first game, you still do research on your enemies. This is done with a movie camera, but unlike the first game, you don’t have to purchase film for it, so it is not as inconvenient to use. Still, doing research on enemies is not a particularly fun task. One good thing about it, is that once you start the camera, the game does automatically switch back to the weapon you previously had equipped.

I suppose the final word on this game is that if you played Bioshock you will find that the experience of Bioshock 2 is very much the same. So, however you felt about the first game, you’ll feel about this game. It has the same feel, with the same stylized graphics. Other than the fact that you have a drill, and you can have Little Sisters harvest ADAM for you, it is very difficult to tell the two games apart. If you never played the original Bioshock try the Bioshock demo. I don’t think there is a demo for Bioshock 2 at this time, but there really isn’t much of a difference for it to matter. If you like the demo, you’ll like this game. I would say, however, that you are better of starting with the original game. It is a little more interesting, and there really aren’t any improvements in this game to make it worth skipping the first. Then, if you had fun with that game, try this one.

Rating: 8/10

I’m not ashamed to admit that I played Mass Effect because I wanted to play Mass Effect 2, and I heard that you could import your character from the first game. I wasn’t really that interested in the series until I saw the previews, and read some reviews for Mass Effect 2. I saw how it was a story driven, third-person RPG type shooter, that looked exciting. The reviews were right, and Mass Effect 2 did not disappoint.

The game itself is a direct sequel to the first one. You continue in the role of Commander Shepard, even with the ability to import your character from the first game. The import process basically imports some of the decisions that you made in the first game, and it sort of imports your character. I say, “sort of”, because you can change Shepard’s class and facial features if you want, so really other than whether Shepard is Male or Female, you aren’t importing that much about the character herself.

Truth be told, Mass Effect 2, stands as an independent game from the first one. And while playing the first game will give you some additional background information on what is going on, and what has happened, you’d be just fine picking this game up and playing it. The decisions imported from the first game, also, don’t have any effect on the outcome of this game. From time to time you might hear a news story about an event that happened in the first game, or you might bump into a character from the first game, but it is really not that big of a deal, and the save-game import is more of a novelty than anything else. It doesn’t have nearly as much effect on the game as some of the ad campaigns made it sound.

The important thing, however, is that Mass Effect 2 is an improvement over the original game. The graphics are better, combat runs more fluidly, and the game is easier to get into.

Saying that the game is easier to get into, is an important thing for this game. It’s an important thing for RPGs in general. A lot of RPGs have the problem of starting out very difficult, and then getting easier as your characters level up. This makes them very frustrating to begin playing, and it becomes very tempting to move onto another game. Mass Effect 2 does not have that problem. You start out tough, you end even tougher. It is a very streamlined experience, and certainly something that shooter fans, with little RPG experience, will be able to get into.

This game is much more of a shooter than the first game, it’s main focuses are combat and story. The story is good, and the combat is excellent and fun. In general the story missions are very well designed. The main focus of the story is building up a team of specialists in order to fight an enemy known as the Reapers. Each mission focuses on recruiting a member for the team, or helping out a member that is already on your team. Throughout this, you will have a few missions involving the Reapers, and the game finally ends with a suicide mission where the team goes to destroy them.

The main quest is very exciting. The side missions, however, are less so. They have the same sort of generic feel, that the side missions in the first game had. They aren’t really repetitive, but they aren’t that exciting either. They don’t have much story, and in general are more annoying than anything else. There aren’t that many of them, however, or at least you don’t feel super motivated to do them, so you’re not going to be bogged down.

One of the side features of the game is mining, where you basically survey a planet by launching probes at it, in order to get minerals. This is probably the lamest part of the game. It is repetitive, and it’s not that fun. The good thing about it, however, is that you really don’t have to do that much of it. Upgrades are bought with mined minerals, but you can pretty much just mine as you need it, and purchase the upgrade you want. There is no reason to spend hours on end going from planet to planet, mining minerals. Though, I personally know of a few people that have. Don’t waste too much time on that, I say.

I want to comment on the suicide mission. I’d heard about this mission well before I played the game. I probably heard about it before the game came out, and all I knew was that some of your team members could die on the mission. This is true. I was worried about this from the start of the game, wondering what decisions would get someone killed. If you think you’ll be worried about this, don’t worry. When I played, all my team members survived, only parts of my crew died. I pretty much played as most gamers would. I wasn’t a completionist by any means, but I did complete all the character quests, and I made smart decisions during the “suicide mission”. My crew died because of decisions I made far to early to realize it would have an effect on the outcome. If I played again, I think I could get everyone to survive with ease, though admittedly, I’m not sure that I’d want all of them to survive.

One thing with this type of game, is that there are a lot of branches that you’ll never explore. There are about eight different romance options and most quests have a few decisions that can effect some things. I personally played as a renegade character as often as possible. It was much funner to see Shepard shoot first and ask questions later, than to never shoot at all. This game does have replayability, but if you don’t feel up to replaying it, you can probably find videos of the various branches on the internet.

The final word on this game is: Play it. It’s a fun game, and most gamers, whether they be shooter fans, or RPG fans, will enjoy it. It’s about 30 hours long, which is good for a game of this magnitude. Plenty of game time, but not so much that you’re sick of it.

Rating: 9/10

When I was the in the fourth grade my hero was a classmate named Clint. He was everything that I wanted to be. I wanted to look like him. I wanted to dress like him. I wanted to act like him. He was the guy that taught me what the f-word was. He used it regularly, and though at the time, I couldn’t bring myself to use it as casually as he did, I admired how boldly he cussed with no fear of teachers yelling at him or calling his parents. I would have followed him to the depths of hell and back. Clint was the type of charismatic guy that could lead a cult. I was honored to be considered his friend.

I suppose what I really admired in Clint was that he was a rebel. He lived outside the bounds that society had set for him, and by that I mean he was way beyond simple cussing on the playground. He was disrespectful of women. I remember there was a girl in our class named Abby, who, even at a young age, was into hairdos and fashion. One time at lunch, Clint shouted across the cafeteria, calling her egg-beater hair. Even as he said it, I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or not, but I wanted Clint to know I approved of his lifestyle, so I did. Like a lady, she ignored him, but I can still see the smug look of satisfaction on Clint’s face.

He had an earring too. This was in the early 90s, when there was a piercing code. Straight men would pierce their left ear, while gay men would pierce their right ear, so only his left ear was pierced. My mom wouldn’t let me get my ear pierced. I wanted an earring though. He’d wear a really dangley earring sometimes too, and though, even at the time, I thought it looked ridiculous when he did, I would have worn one too, just to be like him.

In the bathroom Clint taught me about long distance peeing, where we would stand at one end of the bathroom, and pee into the toilets on the opposite end. Lucky for us the bathrooms in our elementary school were only about four feet across, so it was actually pretty hard not to get it in. Still, it seemed like we were peeing really far. We also had those urinals that go all the way down to the floor, I suppose to accommodate kids of every height, so it was pretty hard to miss.

We weren’t friends though, not really. I realize that now. He knew I was a follower, and for him, I’m sure he got a kick out of the fact that I wanted to hang out with him and be like him. Part of the reason that I know we weren’t really friends is because I never even went to his house, or otherwise hung out with him outside of school. That isn’t the only reason I realize we weren’t really friends, though.

Like I said, Clint was charismatic. I would have done anything to please him, but Abby wasn’t the only person he made fun of. One time he and one of his friends, Kyle, made fun of the way I dressed. I can’t say I blame them, I had no sense of fashion at the time. All I knew was that I liked to wear my favorite shirts, namely my Ninja Turtles shirt, my jet shirt, and my Harley Davidson shirt. As I said, he was making fun of my clothes, and though I didn’t want to admit it, it hurt my feelings a lot. After he finished telling me how bad my sense of fashion was, he said to Kyle, Watch, tomorrow he’s going to show up in a Guess Jeans shirt and Jabeau pants. I remember going home that day, and thinking about how much I wished I could dress the way he described, but alas, half my wardrobe was clothes that my mom had sewn herself. I knew better than to beg her to buy me some new ones.

Clint said he smoked too. Now I don’t know if he really did or not, but he had smoked, and I’m pretty sure that his dad smoked, and hearing Clint talk about smoking, made me want to do it too. I really wanted to smoke. We’d even watched anti-smoking videos in school, but that didn’t have an effect on me. I remember one video where this kid starting smoking a cigarette and it made him cough like crazy, so the kid threw it out. I knew smoking was bad, but in my mind it was cool, and if Clint was smoking, I wanted to be smoking.

One time while discussing cigarettes, Clint pulled a lighter out of his pocket and said that he used it to light up his smokes. It was this really cool lighter where the user didn’t have to spin a flint wheel to ignite, instead it was just a single button. I told Clint that I wanted a lighter like that, and a pack of cigarettes. I asked specifically for Camel cigarettes because that was the only brand I’d heard of. He said he’d get it for me.

The next day he gave me a lighter and one cigarette. I must admit that I was disappointed. I’d asked for a whole pack, and he got me just one. Looking back, I suppose that was all he could sneak, unnoticed, out of his dad’s pack. I was still happy, though, that I had my cigarette. As I said, Clint had the confidence to do whatever he wanted, and that day at lunch we were in the cafeteria eating, and Clint told everyone at the table that I had a cigarette in my backpack. I was utterly shocked, and scared out of my mind that I was going to get caught, and I blurted out, “No, I don’t.” Well, no one seemed to be paying much attention to Clint, so no one questioned me about it, and I was relieved. Still, I wasn’t pleased that Clint had almost gotten me in trouble.

Later that day I was walking home from school, and thinking to myself about how excited I was to smoke my cigarette. My parents are divorced, and I was raised by my mom. She worked hard to support us, and when she got home from work she was so tired that all she did was sleep. I knew I’d have plenty of time to smoke my cigarette without her knowing about it. My plan was to smoke it in my backyard. I was, however, worried that one of my neighbors would see me smoking and call my mom, so I had to be clandestine.

We had a bunch of tires in our backyard. They had been given to us by some neighbors, and we would play with them. Well, I went around to the side of my house, and stacked up all the tires to make a tall tube that I could get inside of, and that’s where I was going to smoke my cigarette. I got the cigarette out of my backpack and, once again, I was disappointed. The cigarette had broken in half. I feared that the experience was going to be over before it even started. I was resilient, however, in my resolution to smoke that cigarette. So I got some scotch tape, and taped it back together.

So there I was, hiding inside a stack of tires, with the lighter, and my taped up cigarette. I was absolutely pleased with myself. I lit it up, and here is the embarrassing part of the whole experience. I didn’t really smoke it. I thought I did, but I didn’t. You see, all I really knew about cigarettes was that you put them in your mouth, and smoke comes out of the end of them. That is exactly what I did, I put it in my mouth, and, instead of inhaling, I blew. I blew so that smoke would come out of the end of it. I thought I was being so cool. I was even holding the cigarette with my index and middle finger, just like I’d seen smokers do. Let me tell you, when you are just sort of puffing on a cigarette and not inhaling, it takes a long time for all that tobacco to burn up. I was “smoking” for maybe fifteen minutes, maybe even longer, till it had finally burned up to where I had taped it, and then I was done.

I was so pleased with myself, though. I even thought I was this tough kid, because I hadn’t started coughing as badly as the kid in the anti-smoking video. I thought, for sure, that smoking was the thing for me. When I was done with the cigarette I casually carried it out to the front yard and dropped it in the gutter along with all the other cigarette stubs that cluttered the street.

The next day at school Clint asked me how the cigarette was, and I said it was great. He then asked me if I was addicted, and I said that I was. Obviously I wasn’t really addicted. I couldn’t have been. I probably didn’t even get any nicotine into my system, but I didn’t know that. All I knew was that I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever done, and I wanted to do it again. That’s why I told Clint I was addicted, because I was hoping he’d get me some more cigarettes. He didn’t, however, and I never had another cigarette again.

I was punished for my vice, though. No, I was never caught, and I never told anyone about the cigarette, but it did scar me. You see, I still had the lighter, and like most boys I found a certain fascination with burning things. One time I took the lighter into the bathroom and started burning some toilet paper. Just a little at first, lighting a small piece, and putting it in a metal trash can to watch the fire die out. Soon I found myself burning more and more at a time, and in the process I burned myself. Some of the flames caught the middle finger of my right hand. Right where you might expect a cigarette to burn a finger if held too long. The burn was so bad that I had no choice but to tell my mom, she asked where I had gotten the lighter. I told her a friend had given it to me, but I didn’t tell her why he’d given it to me. I got a terrible blister. I mean really bad, the scar is still there, on my middle finger. I tell people I got the scar from when I smoked a cigarette.

I’m almost a little ashamed to admit that even today I think smoking looks cool. Well at least Hollywood smoking looks cool, like when you see smoking in movies, and I actually kind of like the smell of burning tobacco when I pass by a smoker. I might have been a smoker. I’m glad I’m not though. I’m glad I never had another cigarette. As cool as I might think it looks, I can’t think of anything more disgusting than sucking smoke into your lungs.

As with most childhood friendships, my acquaintanceship with Clint ended. Part of it was because of the time he made fun of the way I dressed, but it wasn’t just that. He made fun of me a lot more than I was realizing, and when I finally saw how he was really treating me, I didn’t want to hang out with him anymore. I suppose now, I realize, that he probably got tired of me following him around, that’s why he was making fun of me, and, in a way, it was a relief to him that I stopped talking to him. I started hanging out with other kids after that. Kids that most parents would approve of, though admittedly, I never admired any of them the way that I did Clint.

I like Chinese food a lot. Well, not just Chinese, I pretty much like any Asian food. I love noodles, rice, egg rolls, Kung Pao Chicken, and more. The only time I'll eat broccoli is if it is prepared with chicken and curry. Admittedly I prefer Americanized meals where the food is heavy on the meats with less of the grains and noodles, but either way I like it. The one thing that bothers me about Asian restaurants, though, is that you have to ask for chopsticks, at least at all the restaurants where I live. It even kind of bothers me that you don't have to ask for a fork and spoon, though I'm sure that most Americans would disagree with me there.

I was first introduced to Asian cuisine when I was in the fourth grade. In Social Studies class we were learning about the various countries and ethnic groups of the world, and we had "Asia Day". As part of the celebration, we were given a snack that was supposed to introduce us to Asian food. Each of us was given a Styrofoam cup filled with rice and a set of chopsticks. We had the option to put soy sauce on the rice if we felt so inclined.

We had a student teacher working with us at the time, and he demonstrated the use of the chopsticks. He showed how to hold and use them. I'm glad he gave us that little tutorial, because I never would have figured out how to use them on my own. I was hooked right away. It was a pleasure for me to struggle to lift each grain of rice out the cup. I'd heard of chopsticks before that, of course, but I'd never used them, and so it was a big day for me.

I always use chopsticks when eating food from East Asia, even if I make it myself. To be honest, I can't stand eating rice or noodles without them. It just isn't any fun. Normally I don't find eating very fun, but when it's Asian food with chopsticks it is fun. The only time I don't use chopsticks for Asian cuisine is if I am a guest at someone's house.

I'm not claiming to be an expert at using chopsticks, I don't eat Asian food every day, but I am proficient, definitely more-so than your average American. I'm even proud to say that I can lift an ice cube out of a glass of water with them. I'm still working on catching a fly with them. Okay, I'm not really, I doubt many Asians can do that, but I've definitely improved a lot since that time in fourth grade.