Game Update 2: Sam and Max

Telltale games have been delivering new chapters of Sam and Max on schedule (and one episode was even early) all year, and they continue to be enjoyable, funny bits of adventure.

The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball (PC)


The part of this episode is the humor. The new location is a Chuck E. Cheese's-esque restaurant owned by mobsters who go out of their way to convince you they aren't. With the guns and gambling it's a tough sell. It's also the first of three straight episodes with a musical number, which is interesting, I guess. The puzzles are pretty decent, although a little less intuitive than I'd like sometimes. The final one took a bit of the old annoying technique of trying to use your items on everything you see, but they always end up making sense in retrospect, don't they?

Abe Lincoln Must Die! (PC)


Probably the most amusing episode yet, starting with a caaricature of a certain dimwitted president who ends up being a puppet and moving on to a giant, marble reincarnation of Lincoln, who's still a good guy but is being controlled by nefarious characters. The humor is good, and the final couple sequences are clever and a lot of fun to unravel. It ends with Max being the new president of the United States, which has vast humor potential that is explored in this and continues to be tapped in the next episode.

Reality 2.0 (PC)


This chapter is seriously lacking in new locations, but it still feels fresh because of interesting visual changes and new jokes for things you've seen before instead of the same repeats. The whole game has a dualism, as you jump between the normal world and Reality 2.0, a new computer simulation that's better than real life, to solve puzzles. The look is very interesting, and the RPG and internet jokes are funny for nerds like me. The puzzle sequences are the best yet in my opinion, and the surprise ending is awesome and bizarre. Hopefully the duo's trip to the moon in May will finish off the season as well as this continued it.