Available from

TellTale Games!

Platform

Genre

Adventure

Publisher

TellTale Games

Developer

TellTale Games

ESRB

E (Everyone)

Released

May 18, 2010

- Continues the excellent new presentation style, including easier controls and smoother gameplay, with the great graphical quality that gets even better with the great black & white silent films that tie the events of the past with the goings-on of the present
- Using the film reels to move from one level of the adventure to the next is not only inventive but really makes jumping between levels much, much easier

- As pretty much is expected in every game by now, some of the puzzle solutions can be frustrating and difficult to discover

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Sam & Max 302: The Tomb of Sammun-Mak

Score: 9.0 / 10

After dispatching the alien invader Skun-ka’pe in a sci-fi flavored adventure to debut their third season, Sam and Max take a decidedly twisted “mystery tour” blast into the past in the second episode, The Tomb of Sammun-Mak. The Freelance Police

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duo journey to the early 20th century as they continue their quest to acquire the devil’s toybox and its evil contents before a past nemesis, one Mr. Kris Kringle (yes, Santa Claus himself, who once again is evil and cranky instead of the good and jolly he’d have everyone believe), gets his hands on the toybox for his own nefarious purposes.

Along with the already

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improved and enhanced controls that make selecting speech options and the point & click cursor control much easier than before, the inventive use of using film reels improves the gameplay experience. Presented as period-piece black & white silent films that show the current-day Sam and Max the turn-of-the-century misadventures of their long-ago relatives Sameth and Maximus (who will be the characters that gamers will control the majority of The Tomb of Sammun-Mak), the film reels give gamers not only useful information needed to solve many puzzles but also is an extremely easy way to navigate from one level of the adventure to the next.

Despite proclamations from myself that the first episode of season three, The Penal Zone, was possibly the most well-written Sam and Max episode yet, The Tomb of Sammun-Mak tops it, and surprisingly easily. Even with the usual cadre of cameos from a who’s who of Sam and Max co-stars that have appeared in one way or another throughout the three seasons, and despite a number of storylines and plot twists, the main story never gets lost and remains as chock-full of funny hilarity as ever. Along with an assorted cast are a great variety of locales, with the duo (and their early-century relatives) traversing from New York to the pyramid tombs of Egypt and a trip aboard the Disorient Express.

No shooting or driving mini-games are in the Tomb of Sammun-Mak (in fact neither the Freelance Police cruiser or Sam’s famous revolver are to be seen or used), but with a large quantity of mind-teasing puzzles to solve, those mini-games, which oftentimes seemed to be nothing more than tacked on for the sake of tacking on in games past, aren’t missed. Unfortunately, though, as has become a trademark of Sam & Max games, some of the puzzle solutions can be frustrating and damn difficult to discover.

Ending with a patented twisted ending with a twist, The Tomb of Sammun-Mak is yet another great point & click adventure of the hilarious and bizarre lives of the Freelance Police, to be continued in episode three, They Stole Max’s Brain!

- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com

(September 24, 2010)