And here we come to it: the end. This twisted, humorous, epic-in-its-own-way saga comes to a close. It ends about as silly as it begins, if not sillier, and offers a pretty good ending to boot. In short: I’m satisfied.
In this episode, your main objective is to get Max back to his normal self from the giant hulking monster that’s terrorizing New York. This time around, you have some helping hands from Dr.Norrington and the newly-arriving Sybil Pandemik, who apparently shows up in previous seasons as well. With some twists along the way, the story is definitely engaging, and by the end might even manage to lightly tug on some heart strings.
I’m realizing that these five stories could almost stand on their own, but there are some recurring plot elements that tie it all together fairly well (mole men, dark realms, Stinky’s Diner). Honestly, being Sam & Max, continuity and cohesion aren’t completely necessary, so what binds the episodes is enough to still offer a feeling of completing something big by the end.
I also have to say this is probably the funniest episode in the series. I’d hate to give away some gags, but a Patton Oswalt reference was just plain brilliant, and I never thought seeing a giant monster slap an alien space vessel would be so hilarious. If this doesn’t sell you on the game, then I really don’t know what will.
Not much to report gameplay-wise. More than any other episode, this one is more traditional adventure game fare with Max effectively out of the picture as a psychic. Your team mates are neat, but you don’t control them, and have to solve puzzles to unlock their potential with the problem at hand. There is one fun twist to the formula where you get to control Giant Monster Max, but it’s not going to change your thinking about how to solve certain puzzles. It’s just fun.
Fair warning, if you’re looking to play this with a gamepad: there did seem to be a bug where the game would revert to mouse mode rather frequently. I was able to deal with it, but some may not. Hopefully this is a non-issue in due time.
So it’s over now. It’s been a good ride. Being my first serial video game, I have to say overall the experience was just awesome. It was classic adventure gaming with some gameplay twists that, for the most part, I could go along with, with classic video game characters I was more than happy to revisit after well over a decade, that was damned funny, and that was just plain fun.
I think my favorite part about these games is that they are so laid back. This isn’t anything new, but the kind of urgency or tension usually found in games isn’t here. Sure, you may wrack your brain on a few puzzles here and there, or maybe the story will really drive you like a good TV show, but it’s not quite the same as avoiding bullets being fired at you, and there’s no timer seeing how quickly you solve a puzzle, and really, you just can’t die. The stress is the same as solving a mean Sudoku, and I mean that entirely as a compliment. It’s better, in fact, because a Sudoku won’t make you laugh as much.
A review code was provided and did not affect the outcome of this review. This is a review of the PC build.
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