
	Platform PC Genre Adventure Publisher Telltale Gmae/GameTap Developer Telltale Games ESRB T (Teen) Released January 10, 2008

- Less is more; although there’s only about two or three hours of gameplay, it’s always fun, always funny, always teasing the brain for solutions to puzzles in a short, single-sitting burst - Gets the game off the Sam and Max’s neighborhood street and into yet another far away and fun locale

- May just have to settle for trial and error guessing during puzzle-solving instead of enjoying the cracking of the conundrum through smart thinking - Story not quite as entertaining as Ice Station Santa

Review: Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa (PC) Review: Universe at War: Earth Assault (PC) Review: Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (PC)
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Sam & Max 202: Moai Better Blues

Score: 9.0 / 10

Just back from dispatching the “evil” St. Nick at the cold-to-the-bone chilly North Pole, the wacky detective duo of Sam and Max need a little R&R – and other case. So it’s off to Easter Island for the raucous rabbit and canine crime-stopper pair, where the warm breezes and sunny skies of an ocean paradise hide the secret of the Bermuda Triangle. But with Sam and Max on the case in the second episode of Season Two, Sam & Max 202: Moai Better Blues, the triangle’s about to get some obtuse abuse unleashed upon it by the raving rabbit and Maltese Falcon-speaking doggy.

As always, Sam and Max have found a way to mix it up in mystery. In Moai Better Blues, Sam and Max find the answers to the unexplained galore, from talking Easter Island Moai stone heads to what really happened to Jimmy Hoffa, Charles Lindbergh’s baby, D.B. Cooper, Amelia Earhart and Glenn Miller, all who seemingly fell off the face of the earth – along with the secret as to why these supposedly long-gone folks are still around – the fountain of youth!

Moai Better Blues is maybe the kookiest and explosive (literally, as the case is to stop the ghost of Sam and Max’s dead goldfish, Mr. Spatula, from unleashing a cataclysmic flood of piping hot volcanic magma that will destroy Easter Island) Sam and Max story yet, defined once more by great scriptwriting along with

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smartly designed puzzles that challenge gamers without getting too perplexing. The developers are getting better at that blend of hard-but-not-too-hard brainteasers that carry the hilarious dialog and fun gameplay along the path of solving the episode’s case. However, there still are instances when solving a puzzle may resign gamers to settling for trial and error guessing instead of enjoying the

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cracking of the conundrum through smart thinking.

As has been the norm in every episode, there’s a large returning cast of characters, from Sybil to Bosco to Jimmy Two-Teeth to Stinky to the PimpLeCar obsolete-computers-and-technology-from-yesteryear guys. Even Abe Lincoln Memorial Head returns, who is Sybil’s beau until he starts flirting with one of the newly introduced characters from Easter Island , a female Moai stone head. Moai Better Blues relies more heavily on the newer cast than the old, but it’s still comforting seeing the same old faces making an appearance in some form or another.

First it was the North Pole; now, in Moai Better Blues, it’s the topical Easter Islands. Less and less time is being spent on Sam and Max’s neighborhood street for gameplay in Season Two, and that’s been refreshing for gamers that have played through all of Season One, where many times the action in games required heavy back and forth traveling for Sam and Max between distant locations back to the ’hood.

While there’s only two or three hours, tops, of gameplay in Moai Better Blues, it turns out to be a less is more situation: it’s always fun, always funny, always teasing the brain for solutions to puzzles in a short, single-sitting burst.

Apply the sunscreen flip on the sandals for the sunny fun of Moai Better Blues. It has more great writing (despite the fact that Ice Station Santa’s story was superior) that introduces yet another new set of crazy characters into the Sam & Max universe, more zany antics from Sam and Max themselves, more good point & click adventuring – more of the same excellence that gamers have come to expect from the episodic series.

- Lee Cieniawa

lcieniawa@armchairempire.com

(February 6, 2008)


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