Sam and Max: Situation Comedy Review
When a maniacal talk show hostess takes her audience hostage, it’s up to the Freelance Police to stop her. Myra Stump, an obvious parody of Oprah Winfrey, is under a spell of hypnosis, a recurring theme in Season One of Sam and Max: Freelance Police, and our anthropomorphic heroes set out to rescue the audience. New items, returning characters (and their new life-changing choices) as well as a thieving band of razor shaved rats give Situation: Comedy a refreshing feel from the last edition of Sam and Max, while still retaining the slow paced entertainment that players are now familiar with. Then everything is turned on its head in a bout to fight frustration in some of the most ill conceived puzzles ever created.
The majority of this Episode takes place in a TV studio that, of course, parodies contemporary reality and sitcom television. While the events of Sam singing on “Embarrassing Idol” and winning a million dollars on a game show is as hilarious as you’d expect, the actual pointing and clicking gameplay is so far beyond tedious this time around that it becomes painful. Certain puzzles require you to drive back and forth from the downtown hub near the Freelance Police office and the “WARPTV Studio” constantly. Finding tomatoes to knock out an allergic, bias judge requires wandering around multiple areas of the too-jam-packed studio and going down to “Bosco’s Inconvenience Store” or “Sybil’s” more than once.
Trial and error only lengthens the tedium, so you better hope you know what you’re supposed to be doing before you’re told. While the outcome and talky-talky is still as entertaining as it ever was, it’s a lot more “work” than it was in Episode One. Your click-to-laugh ratio is astronomically high, so to speak. This isn’t to say this game isn’t totally awesome, because it is, and once again it will have you jonesin’ for more, though the final “Boss Fight” had my banging my head against the wall, so putting the bow on this one was more relieving than satisfying. Repetitive dialogue with only one possible solution will have your hair turning gray as you tear it from your head. It makes you wonder what the purpose of having decision making options is if there’s a singular, finite solution.
The relief comes in Telltale’s continuously cleverly brilliant writing and promise of more excellence in Episode Three. Situation: Comedy could easily be solved in 90 minutes if you’re on top of things, but I spent at last another 30 - 45 minutes trying to figure out some of the more specific details of some puzzles.
This isn’t to be passed up, you just need to be patient with it. Sam and Max continues to entertain and another cliff-hanger has you pumped for the next Episode, which will obviously play further on the hypnosis theme. It’s a great laugh, and the television situations Sam and Max take part in are super fun to see play out - just hope you do everything right, or you’ll be repeating them ad nauseam.