Sam & Max are back for yet another episode, and are even funnier than ever! In Reality 2.0, the Internet, online gaming, and the history of computers are all fodder for the writers. The result is truly hilarious.
Again, it’s up to Sam & Max to save the world from itself. In the last episode, Abe Lincoln Must Die!, Max was elected President of the United States. He promptly moved the Office to his office, and is merrily conducting national affairs. But, duty calls, when Sam and Max are informed that computers all around the world have suddenly crashed. They immediately set out to discover the cause and help get America back online.
The whole setup is rich with material, with jabs taken at MOP games, beta testing, game designers, game geeks, and of course, the ubiquitous Internet, which is portrayed by a robotic female avatar. Bosco is too funny as a half-elf, his chosen avatar in the online gaming community. Sybil is also present again, and this time her career of choice is as a beta-tester. My favorite joke was the one where Bosco reveals that his online banking password was deleted from his memory, but instead placed on an unnamed part of his anatomy for security purposes. I found this hysterical, given my own husband’s obsession with security and other issues of Internet privacy.
The puzzles appear to be a bit more challenging in this episode, although still not overly difficult. They just require a little more thought than previously. Part of the game is centered on the alternate world of Reality 2.0, a virtual online community. Sam & Max will travel back and forth between this virtual world and the real world to solve many of the puzzles.
The designers had a lot of fun with the Reality 2.0 virtual world, with some great artwork! The virtual settings mirror the actual settings, but in a bizarre manner. Bosco’s store has been transformed into an elven-themed store, similar to the type that would be in a fantasy RPG. There is a “hot rump” skewered on a spit on the counter, and a list of goods for sale items hanging on a wooden board. Of course, Sam & Max need to buy a needed item from Bosco, and this time it’s a “long sword of incredible longness” on sale for 5 gold coins in Reality 2.0. Of course, this requires they find and collect these coins while in Reality 2.0. At the same time in the real world, they need to cough up a billion dollars for a biological weapon.
As in previous games, there is a humorous song parody, this time sung by a group of obsolete computers, game machines and output devices. The song is their motivational song for their support group meetings. The song itself isn’t all that funny, but the reaction of Sam & Max to this song is priceless. Players will need to keep getting the machines to sing more verses to get the full effect. The end of the game is too funny, as well, with a look back at text adventures straight from the world of Infocom.
This is the fifth episode in a series of six, and they just keep getting better! I can’t wait for the next and last episode. If people have waited this long to experience the new Sam & Max, I would advise to buy the whole set of episodes for $35, which is the best price anyway. The episodes themselves are each only a few hours worth of gameplay, but as a whole unit, this game will offer many hours of fun.
It’s truly a difficult task to take a product that has a large fan appeal and a solid reputation and resurrect it successfully many years later. I have been disappointed many times before with similar games that just didn’t meet the bar set by the original game. Telltale has done a splendid job with Sam & Max, although I don’t like the episodic formula as well. However, Telltale is a business and hopefully this particular business model is bringing in profit, so they can continue to make great games.
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