I've played all of these before and didn't like them. As far as I remember, they looked pretty ugly, they weren't particularly funny or clever, and they kept on using the same characters over and over even though there wasn't anything interesting about them at all. I think the third season took a leap in terms of looks and invention but iirc I still wasn't a massive fan of it. I think I'll have a quick play of episode 1 and if it's as bad as I remember, move onto the next season and so on, just to remind myself of what they were like. It's a shame I don't happen to have a copy of the remastered ones from Skunkape, it'd be interesting to see how much of a difference they've been able to make to them.
Well, I played some S&M S01E01, and yeah, the main issue is that it's not very funny. It's like this photocopy of the Sam & Max style - just say incredibly long sentences full of odd word choices and have Max be sadistic, that'll do it. Plus it's not off to a very interesting start. You get told that there's trouble at your local corner shop, so you go down and find out that there are some ex child stars who have been hypnotised into doing some very minor crimes, and you struggle to arrest them because they run fast. It's all very bleh, and it's not helped by Sam sounding more bored than Joe Friday. Presentation-wise, even setting aside the low fidelity that they were stuck with because the suits insisted on getting the games to fit on the Wii which leads to some crappy textures, low-poly models and bad voice quality, it doesn't look great. Sometimes you catch an angle that looks pretty nice but there's not a lot of cohesion, there are far too many bright colours slapped together and ugly-ass street signs done with digital fonts rather than by hand.
Perhaps it's unfair, but compare this to the first half hour of Hit The Road, where you've already had a hundred great lines, met some amazing characters, done a bunch of fun stuff and got embroiled in a cool case, and it all looks and sounds amazing.
So I think I'll watch a playthrough vid of the remaster out of interest, then skip forward to season 3 and see how that is.
Yeah, wow, they did a really good job on that remaster, it looks ten times better. Doesn't fix the ropey writing and puzzles, but never mind!
Played a bit of season 3, and holy shit the differences are palpable. I laughed multiple times! It's at 1920x1080 now, the textures are a lot better and everything ties together well, putting a layer of grime over everything really helps. The direction is so much more dynamic, and the opening is exciting! And they're playing around with fun stuff like using stock photographic images and riffing on The Twilight Zone and doing weird narrative structures. The new control scheme is a little weird but I'm getting used to, and it's a shame that the models' poly counts are still a little low, but overall it's amazing how far this series came in the 2 years since the previous season.
Finished S3 episode 1. I enjoyed that!
It's definitely still over-written - a lot of the time if they just cut the last two lines from a dialogue it would be hugely improved - and has the occasional stinker of a joke.
It still suffers from using the same old one-note/zero-note characters, too. Why the fuck use Bosco's mother as your scientist? The only interesting thing about her is that she's a ghost, and that doesn't even affect anything! Just make a new fun scientist character! I don't care if you have to reuse a model and slap glasses on them or something, as long as they're funny and interesting. Plus still with this gang of computers who are so dull and unfunny - the only thing they do here is put clues together for you, which could at least be done by Flint Paper or the scientist person if you can't afford to model new stuff.
But puzzles-wise, it's fun and fair. The only issue there is that they often signal information in weird ways so you're not sure if you're not thinking hard enough or they just haven't conveyed stuff to you correctly. This could probably be fixed with a proper verb set rather than the 'one button for everything' system tbh.
But yeah, streets ahead of most of the games I've played since Grim Fandango. I am going to try the second episode but I remember liking it a lot less, so if it gets irritating I might skip to the last episode...
I played through episode 2. I think I actually gave up on it the first time round, so it was mostly new to me. It's definitely not as good as ep 1, you can already see their rushed episodic schedule catching up with them - it doesn't look as good, it's not as polished, it's a lot buggier, the level layouts play havoc with the new direct control system, and it's back to not being funny. The puzzles are pretty interesting - you can flip between different chapters of the story, and use information from one to get further in another. In practice this means they boil down to just being different sets of rooms, but it's still a bit more inventive than the previous seasons. Funnily enough, it's quite similar to an idea we had for a Dan & Ben 3 - the God Complex one. We even uses VHSes to represent chapters where here they use reels. Ours was a lot cleverer, though - the chapters were set years apart and by changing the events of one you affected the set up of the others.
I was considering playing episodes 3 and 4, but I think of the few things I remember about them and groan, so I won't bother. I don't think I'll even bother with the finale, to be honest. I'll just move on.
Rating: Mostly bad, with moments of quality in season 3.
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