I will begin by saying thank you Gameboomers for the initial downloads of the chapter episodes of this series. Yes I was one of the fortunate three or so who won the game here. As a bonus I was allowed to obtain the DVD release from Telltale Games for the price of postage. The DVD release is what we are looking at with this review.

My initial exposure to this game was to play portions of it on Game Tap which I found game play to be inconsistent. Most likely the result of connection difficulties. I found most on line gaming sites varied in playability which caused a bit of resistance on my part to get involved. The downloaded versions from Telltale worked fine but due to other issues, everyday living, time was too constricted to give the downloaded episodes a fair examination. They did of course strongly suggest this series was worth the time to examine.

The DVD release was well worth the wait and my copy ran without any issues on Win-XP. I cannot say how close Sam and Max Season 1 is to the original release back in the 90's as I have not seen the game. But this one it is great fun. No spoilers here as I will stick to general game play and what to expect. The game is point and click without any pixel hunting, most everything you can interact with is obvious. I would suggest you click on everything to experience all the zany goings on and the wisecracks. The jokes are too numerous to even begin to quote. But as I can't resist here is an example,


Sam while holding a bomb says,
"Max where should I put this so it doesn't hurt anyone we
know or care about?"
Max replies "Out the window, Sam. There's nothing but
strangers out there."
Sam, looks at the bomb in his hand and throws it out the
window behind him The bomb explodes outside the window.
Sam: "I sure hope there was no one on that bus."
Max: "No one we know, at least..."

You can play the episodes in any order you wish but as each chapter loosely builds on the previous one it seems best to go in order. The graphics are pure cartoon as you would expect with the protagonists being a six foot dog and a hyper rabbit. Other characters such as Jimmy the rat, Bosco the inconvience store operator and Sybill the therapists are all well done and great to interact with.

The puzzles are mostly logical, mostly, but some can be a reach One of the criticisms I read was the game length which may or may not be valid. This issue was encountered in prior reviews of the episodes that alone are not what one considers game length but when loading the DVD's six chapters the total appeared to make a reasonable length game. For instance it is much longer than Destination Treasure Island which I just completed. It could be the gags keep you laughing and you linger a bit longer than you have to.

The game saves for you automatically when you complete a task, but you can save whenever you wish. No need to finish a puzzle to reach the auto save so you can quit for the day. I find this vastly superior to the annoying auto save only used in the game 80 Days. Your inventory is represented by an icon of a small unobtrusive cardboard box bottom left of the screen. Click on it and the box spills the stuff out. You then click on what you want the box uprights replacing the contents. A unique concept in keeping with Sam and Max's originality.

Is it the game of the year? Perhaps not, but I can't think of a release for 2007 that is better. The story is pure slapstick, the characters are all engaging, the six chapters are comparable in length to other games recently issued, there is a laugh a minute and the game ran without issues. What more could you want? Let's see Season 2?

Oldmariner, I'm with you in looking forward to Season 2. It's a lot of fun to play

Thanks Old Mariner -- it's great to get feedback from someone who played the entire Season from the DVD. I'm glad to hear that the episodes hang together so well when played that way.