
	Platform Wii Genre Adventure Publisher Dreamcatcher / The Adventure Company Developer Telltale Games ESRB T (Teen) Released Q4 2008

- Use of Wiimote for controlling gameplay makes easy transition from mouse-oriented point & click PC controls - Exposes a whole new audience to the hilarious humor of Sam & Max

- Graphically not as polished as PC version - Doesn’t stitch together all six episodes into one seamless game

Review: Sam & Max Season One (PC) Review: Sam & Max Season Two (PC) Review: And Then There Were None (Wii)
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Sam & Max Season One

Score: 9.0 / 10

The barker and the bunny, otherwise known as the zany Freelance Police duo of doggy detective Sam and whacked-out and rascally rabbit Max, returned from a long, long gaming sojourn with the release of two series of episodic point & click adventure games. Those two “seasons” exposed a whole new generation of gamers to the same hilarious ribaldry and great storytelling that they had in their first game way back when in the classic point & click adventure game from

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- Wii Game Reviews
- Adventure Game Reviews

LucasArts, the development house that churned out hit after point & click hit when the genre dominated the PC gaming world. With the second season of PC episodic adventures already completed last year, Sam & Max have finally made their leap onto consoles with Sam & Max Season One on the Wii.

Featuring a raucous storyline that has the twosome investigating a

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bizarre cast of characters from former child stars, the mafia and even the Lincoln Memorial’s severed stone head (which is its own “living” entity), the writing is some of the best in gaming today, with witty banter and wisecracking shenanigans sure to please any and all gamers. Gameplay is classic point & click style: point at an object on-screen, and click to interact to come up with solutions to the many puzzles and challenges of the game. Each of the six episodes should last two or three hours, so there’s a pretty long-lasting adventure to be undertaken. Unfortunately, it’s not a seamless adventure, as instead of “stitching” all six episodes into one, each singular episode must be selected to play it.

However, more than making up for that small issue is that the Wii’s Wiimote perfectly compensates as a replacement for the mouse of the PC, which is so essential for a genre that relies entirely on good point & click controls. Visually, the game is a bit of a disappointment, as there is a washed-out appearance to the game’s on-screen color palette that doesn’t happen in the PC version. But unless a gamer has already played the PC version, it won’t be very noticeable.

For both the young (who were either too youthful or not even born to have been around for the point & click adventure gaming rage of the early 1990s) and old (those who were lucky enough to have experienced the golden age of LucasArts point & click adventuring, including the classic Sam & Max Hit the Road), the Wii version of Sam & Max Season One is sure to bring more than a few rib-tickling chuckles and guffaws along with the superbly written story for a hilarious gaming journey.

- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com

(March 24, 2009)