Sam & Max Save the World

Sam & Max Save the World is a video game that consists of 5 releases
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6 user reviews 4 / 5 avg score
4/5 stars Reviewed on June 19, 2009

Sam & Max Save the World is easily the funniest game on the Xbox 360.

By Jeff Gerstmann
GB review 6 user reviews wiki
This review is for the XBLM release of Sam & Max Save the World.
The Secret Service dance number is a real high point.
The Secret Service dance number is a real high point.
The six episodes of classic adventure gaming found in Sam & Max Save the World make for some of the funniest moments in the past five years of gaming. Compiling them into one download and only charging $20 for them feels like some sort of clerical error... well, at least it does until you pick up the controller and start playing. Translating a point-and-click adventure game over to a gamepad makes everything feel just a touch slower, and after an hour or so of play, I found myself wishing that the phony "warp drive" option in the menus actually did something.

But the pokey cursor movement that you get when translating a mouse cursor to a gamepad and the game's occasionally choppy frame rate are probably the only bad things you can say about this collection. The characters are charming and memorable, the dialogue is often hilarious, and the game is technically proficient enough to usually convey that dialogue with the appropriate comic timing. The episodic nature of the set lets Sam (the dog) and Max (the rabbit-like thing) get into plenty of wild situations. While each episode manages to be fairly self-contained, they play off of one-another enough to make the whole season feel like a cohesive story. As such, allow me to advise you to play through all six episodes in order, even though the main menu lets you take them on however you please.

The gameplay itself is pretty standard as point-and-click adventure games go. You're primarily solving puzzles to move forward, and you interact with objects by, you know, clicking on them. Clicking on an open area lets you walk around the environments, and you also have an inventory of items that you use in conjunction with other items. So, for example, you might pick up a plate and set it on a cow's head. Or maybe you'll pull out your pistol and shoot objects, just for kicks. The puzzles you'll solve are generally pretty clever, and since moving past the puzzles gives you more opportunities for hilarious dialogue on topics including hypnosis, child stars, goofy songs, old video game hardware, the mafia, and Abe Lincoln, moving through the game is appropriately rewarding.

Graphically, the game stays fairly cartoony, with just enough facial detail for the characters to give knowing glances to each other, or the camera. There's enough fidelity to the environments to make things you'll need to interact with plainly visible, though the frame rate can get pretty dicey in spots. The audio is fantastic, with great voice acting across the board and great music backing it all up.

Funny games are still something of a rarity, so even though these episodes of Sam & Max originated on the PC two years ago, they still totally stand up against more recent releases. Also, with six different episodes to move through, you'll probably end up spending something like eight to 12 hours playing through them all. When taken as one long game, the quality stays high throughout, making that $20 investment well worth the money.
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A Classic Returns to Form (PC)

Steve Purcell's Sam & Max: Freelance Police franchise has taken many forms: first as an independent comic series, then as a LucasArts adventure game, and then as a Saturday morning cartoon show. When LucasArts announced the cancellation of the second Sam & Max adventure game in 2003, the myriad fans ...

Reviewed by KensterFox on July 21, 2008 		4 out of 4 found this review helpful.
Not quite as good as in the golden age, but still lots of fun (PC)

Sam & Max: Season 1 tries to continue what LucasArts stopped doing a decade ago, namely being a point&click adventure in the very classical sense. The interface is for most part what you expect, you have an inventory as usual, classic dialog trees and control your character by good old ...

Reviewed by Grumbel on May 1, 2009
Well worth the price. (XBLM)

Sam & Max: Save the World, just released on Live Arcade, is the latest point-and-click adventure game from Telltale to show up on the Xbox Live Arcade, and is based off of Sam & Max: Season One that was released for the PC in 2006-2007. It boasts six unique episodes ...

Reviewed by Wesker on July 6, 2009
Sam & Max Save the World 134 images
General Information Edit
Game Name Sam & Max Save the World
Platform(s)
Publisher(s)
Developer(s)
Genres
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Adventure
Themes
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Crime
Original US Release Aug. 7, 2007
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Original US Release know the real date?
Aliases Sam & Max: Season One
ESRB
ESRB: T
PEGI
PEGI: 12+
Guides Create
Sam and Max Ep. 1 Walkthrough

A walkthrough of Season 1's first episode, Culture Shock!
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