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Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa

Score: 88%
ESRB: Not Rated
Publisher: GameTap
Developer: Telltale Games
Media: Download/1
Players: 1
Genre: Adventure

Graphics & Sound:

Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa, the first episode in the second season of the great episodic adventure that is Sam & Max, is perfectly fitting for this holiday season.

Like the first season, the exaggerated, cartoony graphics that gives Sam & Max their particular and oh-so-distinct feel returns. Everything from their messy office, to the street they work on, are all as you left them by the end of last season's final game (including the relocated Sybil's). On top of that, the North Pole location, where you will be spending about half of your time, also looks awesome in that very twisted way everything from this game does.

Ice Station Santa does pretty good as far as sound is concerned as well. Both Sam and Max are appropriately voiced and the game's sound effects and music have the very distinct feel that helps to make this series what it is.


Gameplay:

Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa takes place, as you would expect, after the events of the first season. During your new adventure, you will run into several characters from previous games like Sybil, The Soda Poppers (now all ex-governors), Bosco and a few other familiar faces. This game starts off with the destructive duo having their normal day interrupted by a giant mechanical wind-up robot tearing up their building. It seems that for some reason, Santa has sent Sam and Max a Maimtron 9000 and the pair of freelance police have taken it upon themselves to find out exactly what has gone wrong with jolly old Saint Nick.

When the two characters reach the North Pole, they find Santa hold up in the back room with a shot gun pointed at anyone who moves. The only people who seem to know anything are the pair of elves that haven't been outsourced yet. You quickly deduce the fact that, somehow, Santa has been possessed by an evil spirit and Sam and Max have got to save Christmas.

During the events of Ice Station Santa, you will not only deliver strange presents to unsuspecting people, travel through time and search for the Four Horsemen Dolls, but as an added bonus, you will have to make an elf cry (well, Max saw it as a bonus anyway). Once again, a great storyline full of typical mayhem and destructive fun.

During your adventure, you will also run across a mini-game where you have to box rats with a little baby doll. This was a nice distraction for the part of the game it shows up in, so definitely look forward to some rampant, unnecessary violence, but then again, it wouldn't be a Sam & Max game without at least some rampant, unnecessary violence.


Difficulty:

Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa has a nice mix of quick puzzles and tougher ones that will leave you stumped for a little while. Ultimately, though, none of the challenges the game throws at you are insurmountable and the game itself can be completed in only a handful of hours (don't fret over the shortness of gameplay, this is an episodic style game after all, and the price is appropriately adjusted). There are a couple of parts to this game that might have your typical point-and-click gamer stumbling a bit (namely the rat-boxing), but with some perseverance, even those challenges can be overcome.

Game Mechanics:

Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa is, and always has been, the epitome of point-and-click adventures. The game's mechanics consists little more than going around picking up objects that you can, talking to people and trying to use objects you have in your inventory with objects or people you can't pick up. Like I said, it's basic adventure controls, which shouldn't be surprising since the original Sam & Max helped to define the genre, and nothing has really changed for the game in that respect.

There are a couple of control improvements to this game over last season's run, the main change being the ability to run. In order to get Sam to move to your mouse's location faster, simply double click (a feature I very much missed in the last series). Also, clicking and holding down the mouse causes Sam to follow your cursor, so you have a couple of options to fit your personal style.

Ice Station Santa is definitely worth checking out for existing Sam & Max fans, as well as people who like this style of gameplay, but haven't had the chance to get into this particular license yet. If you are already a GameTap subscriber, then definitely look into downloading and playing this latest installment.


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

Minimum System Requirements:



Windows XP/Vista, 800MHz Processor (if using a video card with hardware T & L); 1.5GHz processor (if using a video card without hardware T & L), 256 MB RAM, 32MB 3D-accelerated video card
 

Test System:



Alienware Aurora m9700 Laptop, Windows XP Professional, AMD Turion 64 Mobile 2.41 GHz, 2 GB Ram, Duel NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS 256MB Video Cards, DirectX 9.0c

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Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated