Frenetic fuzzballs

Question: What do you get when you cross a no-nonsense gumshoe dog, a manic rabbit-thing with a penchant for violence, a hefty dose of sardonic wit and questionably legal police work?

Well, other than a lot of matted dog and rabbit fur, a wrinkled suit and fedora, and some intangibles, I have no idea. But it might be something close to Sam & Max: Season One, a throwback point-and-click adventure title now making its console debut.

For those that aren’t familiar with Sam & Max, let me explain a little further. Originally created by cartoonist Steve Purcell in 1987, the titular duo are a pair of so-called freelance police (read: animals with no actual authority) who spend their time catching an eclectic, bizarre array of no-goodniks committing equally nonsensical and ridiculous crimes.

Their first game, Sam & Max Hit the Road, debuted for the PC courtesy of Lucasarts in 1993, and was received warmly for its classic point-and-click gameplay and dark, sarcastic brand of humor.

Since Hit the Road, fans of the series rabidly clamored for more until 2006, when Telltale Games resurrected the series with a 3D, touched-up series of episodic, two-to-three hour PC adventures that collectively became known as Sam & Max: Season One.

Now that Telltale has released the game for the Nintendo Wii, console owners can get in on the action. But after garnering several accolades among last year’s PC cream-of-the-crop, is a one-and-a-half-year-old port of the game really worth it? Yes, and no … but not necessarily in that order.

Throughout all six of the season’s episodes, you control Sam (Max is a little too unhinged to really be controllable). The humor lies not only in dark, funny pop-culture references and ridiculous plots (in one episode, the duo accidentally decapitate the president and Max must run for the office himself against a giant, animatronic statue of Lincoln bent on mind-controlling the whole country … yeah) but also in a never-ending barrage of glib jokes and banter between Sam, Max and other characters within the game.

As is common in the genre, Sam & Max has a lot of dialogue, doled out by our furry protagonists with rapid-fire, deadpan wit that ranges from odd to laugh-out-loud funny. Sam does most of the talking, rattling off long and overly loquacious zingers as the unflappable straight man of the duo. Max, with a paradoxically cheerful countenance, chimes in with comments that often play up his violent and bizarre underpinnings.

An example of dialogue between Sam, Max and other characters goes something like this:

Sam: We’d like to patronize you.

Max: And by patronize, he means we want to buy stuff from you, not mock you. We probably will mock you, but that’s not what he means.

Bosco: I know what he means! Don’t patronize me! Now what do you want to buy?

Thus in Sam & Max clever wordplay is the name of the game–which is good, as there’s a lot of it and it’s definitely one of the title’s biggest strengths.

The other big strength is its gameplay, at least if you’re a fan of point-and-click adventures. Like pretty much any good title in the genre, you investigate environments to find clues, collect items, interact with other characters and solve puzzles.

This is done with a cursor-based interface, which is used to highlight objects and can be clicked on for observation or interaction. The genre has always been known for its emphasis on using objects within the environment to get past gameplay obstacles, and as such, it can be a time-consuming and brain-taxing process.

Make no bones about it–Sam & Max is not an action game (although Sam and Max both carry firearms), or even a platformer, and given its unapologetic adherence to its old-school genre, it’s not going to appeal to everyone. That being said, the Wii is probably the only console they could have really have released the game on, since Nintendo’s Wiimote stands in nicely for a mouse, the point-and-click’s old flame.

Generally, PC-to-console translations, rare as they are, have in the past been streamlined so that they’re more accessible with a controller. This, however, has yielded mixed results (just look at the PS2’s iteration of Escape from Monkey Island).

Although Sam & Max proves the Wii can do well (or better) with the genre, sadly the game is hampered by some technical problems that detract from the overall experience.

Little graphical and interface problems pop up, meaning Sam doesn’t always move in the direction he’s supposed to, camera angles sometimes obscure the action during dialogue scenes and very occasionally you may hit a cut scene that, when triggered outside of its programmed boundaries, causes the game to glitch to a halt.

Perhaps the most glaringly obvious problem, though, comes in the form of the game’s massive frame rate issues.

This is particularly notable during the game’s driving sequences, (about as close as Sam & Max gets to “action” in the modernist sense) when the frame rate gets so choppy it’s like streaming a high-speed chase at 56k.

Equally annoying are sound cue problems, which amount to voice work sometimes unintentionally overlapping or cutting off before a line is finished.

Given that this is a port of an at least year-old PC game, these problems seem inexcusable. The Wii might not be that powerful a system, but it’s powerful enough to handle the likes of this game–Sam & Max is neither extremely graphically intensive nor otherwise taxing on a processor, memory or anything else. It seems obvious to me that this one needed a little more time in the oven.

Yet, I can’t and won’t out-and-out condemn Sam & Max. Buggy, glitchy elements, as well as some truly neck-snappingly annoying guest characters aside, the game is well thought out, well written and pretty damn funny.

I’d be lying if I said the slap-dash nature of the port didn’t at times seriously test my patience. However, very rarely does it get to a point past annoyance, and if you like the genre, the game is worth your time, warts and all.

Besides, Sam and Max have been gone for too long. Let’s just hope if Telltale ports Season Two, they give it a little more shine.

Sam & Max: Season One*** 1/2 Telltale GamesNintendo Wii$29.99