Kind of disappointed...

edited June 2010 in Sam & Max
I´m a big fan of everything that Telltale´s made and especially Sam&Max. But I don´t know what to think about these two episodes. Sure, they look great, the gameplay is harder and more advanced but something´s missing. There´s too little of the psychotic Max ("the total annihilation of the godless Belgians", "is this the end of little Maxie?"), the dialog isn´t as razorsharp as in the two last seasons. I sure hope that this will change in the upcoming episodes.
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Comments

  • edited May 2010
    Not to degrade your opinion or anything, but I find this statement interesting because other than looking great, you share the complete opposite view than the general consensus. From my observation, most people found the gameplay to be easier than the previous seasons (or at least season two), and found that the writing is top notch.

    Do tell more.
  • edited May 2010
    psychotic max is ben treded in of psychic max mackin him more evolved hill be bark wen sam ask max you seam different. max: shore sam but psychic now. sam: um gust be you. max: ok sam. den they find a new toy and it macs max grow big in to the 50 foot rabbet sam: I shouldn't have said that.
  • edited May 2010
    i'm too feel this season is easier to beat than the last, but i'm not sure that's a bad thing... every other TTG game except for this season i've had to bust out the walkthrough at some point. it's not a good feeling, so far i'm 2-0 for this season though! i will say this however, season 3 could've used more polish. enginewise, the film grain, absolute future vision insanity, sometimes making the puzzles feel TOO easy
  • edited May 2010
    I guess everyone's different. I found the writing better in this one, but there did seem to be less of the following:
    1) click something you know is unimportant, 2) sam says something, 3) max says something witty in response.

    It felt like there were a million of these items in season 1, in settings such as their office.
  • edited May 2010
    kane wrote: »
    Psychotic Max has been traded in for Psychic Max, making him more evolved. He'll be back when Sam asks Max "You seem different." Max: "Sorry Sam, but I'm psychic now." Sam: "Hum, just be yourself." Max: "Ok, Sam." Then they find a new toy and it makes Max grow big into the 50 foot rabbit. Sam: "I shouldn't have said that."

    Your speculation is always nice to read, but I wish you didn't keep stating it as facts.
  • edited May 2010
    Oh no, not the 50 foot rabbit!
  • edited May 2010
    sorry but 50 foot rabbit! is to Dow waif vision's
  • edited May 2010
    I know what the 50 foot rabbit is based on, there was the future vision, there is the villains' lineup, but the whole scenario you talk about is speculation and you kind of make it sound like it's totally what's going to happen.
    Which is... a bit weird, I guess?
  • edited May 2010
    You know, it's a curious fact about popular franchises that no matter how popular they are or how consistent their quality is, there will always be, after every new release, a few people with negative reactions ranging from "I wish this thing was better" to "omg it has jumped the shark I hate the dude who made this now"
  • edited May 2010
    Maratanos wrote: »
    You know, it's a curious fact about popular franchises that no matter how popular they are or how consistent their quality is, there will always be, after every new release, a few people with negative reactions ranging from "I wish this thing was better" to "omg it has jumped the shark I hate the dude who made this now"

    I think that just comes down to the simple platitude, "You cant please everyone all of the time, so you have to please some people most of the time".
  • edited May 2010
    I think that just comes down to the simple platitude, "You cant please everyone all of the time, so you have to please some people most of the time".

    Meh. I just say, make something you're proud of and see if people like it or not. Pleasing the masses isn't worth a damn if you have to make something you dislike for that.
  • edited May 2010
    pwblaine wrote: »
    i'm too feel this season is easier to beat than the last, but i'm not sure that's a bad thing... every other TTG game except for this season i've had to bust out the walkthrough

    you had to use a walkthrough for the WAllace & Grommit Episodes? I think they were noticeably easier than Tomb Of Sammun-Mak.
    I am also quite pleased with the fact that I don't need a walkthrough to complete the episodes in this season but still get the feeling that I accomplished something because some of the puzzles are not too obvious.
  • edited May 2010
    I needed one twice in the final episode.
    Probably because I am not too much a fan of golf...

    Aside from that, don't think I needed one.
  • edited May 2010
    I don't understand how making a game that forces you to read a walkthrough is a mark of a good game. A good adventure game should make you think logically about your decisions rather than you having to get out of the game so you can find an illogical or esoteric solution made by the game developers. Unless your someone who doesn't want to stop and think about something so you can just finish the game, thats not why you should be playing, you don't play a game simply for the satisfaction of completing it, you play a game for the journey it takes you to finish it.
  • edited May 2010
    I too aren't feeling it in this season. I do love the bumped up graphics (even though it crashes my laptop and runs at a 6-7 graphics level on my desktop pc, it's still impressive to me!), the controls aren't that bad, and the new (and old) characters are great.

    I think not hearing a single new musical/lyrical song (yet) disappoints me. I always looked forward to those...

    Episode one was good. It was getting back into the swing of things and introducing the new at the same time. Episode two, however, felt a bit too different in both good and bad. Good: I loved it's way of telling the story (jumping back and forth between reels to get the whole picture). Bad: death scenes (one of the main reasons why I never got into the Space Quest series). Also, it seemed like the story was cut short. For example, I probably wouldn't want to wander a desert to find the temple (I mean, what's there to do in a desert than just wander?), but I don't know... Maybe old black and white serials/films/etc cut to important scenes quickly like that too?

    I just find this season... interesting, so far. There's a great chance this will not be my favorite... :/
  • edited May 2010
    Breakman wrote: »
    Bad: death scenes (one of the main reasons why I never got into the Space Quest series).

    I dunno ... the deaths are funny in both, but Sammun-Mak's deaths weren't reliant upon the player having a recent save in order for the "do over" to be painless. So they felt more like pure jokes to me, without the Sierra-esque baggage. I think I would only be bothered if Telltale had gone past homage into actual "Oh, guess what! You died for real. Hope your last save wasn't made several, precious hours-of-your-life ago ... !" That said, "death-hunting" wasn't exactly at the top of my list of things to do in my first playthrough, so ... *shrug*
    Breakman wrote: »
    Also, it seemed like the story was cut short. For example, I probably wouldn't want to wander a desert to find the temple (I mean, what's there to do in a desert than just wander?), but I don't know... Maybe old black and white serials/films/etc cut to important scenes quickly like that too?

    My limited experience with these types of films tells me "yes." This happens a lot.

    On a different note -- great to see you around here again, Breakman! Sammun-Mak turned out to be one of my personal favorites, so I find it difficult to commiserate with your disappointment, I'm afraid. I do hope you'll enjoy the next episodes more, though. There's still more than half the season to go, after all! :D
  • edited May 2010
    I'll admit that this was the first episode that I was sort of disappointed by (and I've played through all the TTG Sam & Max episodes and S&M Hit the Road). And it was basically for the following reasons: it only took me about 4-5 hours to solve, and it didn't drive me to the hints forum in a state of desperation to figure out what the heck the sideways solution was to any puzzle. I like the stumpers that are completely psychotic that make me have to get away from the game for a couple of days so I can see things differently when I get back, and that make you say either "Duh!" or "What?!?!? Are you nuts?!?!?" when you solve them. I didn't get any of that here.

    Of course, there was still the squirrelly interface for walking around that drives me bonkers so I guess I had at least one source of frustration and difficulty.
  • edited May 2010
    pwatol wrote: »
    it only took me about 4-5 hours to solve
    Isn't that more than any Season 1 or 2 episode? :confused:
  • edited May 2010
    Episode 2 was one of my all time favorite episodes... OF ALL TIME. Really enjoyed the atmosphere, puzzles and dialogue.
  • edited May 2010
    jovak wrote: »
    I´m a big fan of everything that Telltale´s made and especially Sam&Max. But I don´t know what to think about these two episodes. Sure, they look great, the gameplay is harder and more advanced but something´s missing. There´s too little of the psychotic Max ("the total annihilation of the godless Belgians", "is this the end of little Maxie?"), the dialog isn´t as razorsharp as in the two last seasons. I sure hope that this will change in the upcoming episodes.
    What I can say is that from the little parts I saw of Season 2... it seems like that the old season was more "Sam & Max"-ey, with lots of popular culture references, maybe less family friendly jokes, etc.
  • edited May 2010
    I feel kind of bad for writing this, since it was a generally clever and well-written episode, but I didn't really like 302. I felt like jumping back and forth through the reels allowed for clever puzzle design, but that it didn't do the story any favors. I had assumed Sam and Max were "reliving" Sameth and Maximus' adventures, but there are too many plot holes in the story for that to make sense
    (like singing Amelia to sleep with "Flight of the Valkyries". How the heck would they have known to do that short of time travel?)
    and all the jumping around made the story harder to follow without making for a more interesting telling
    (like finding out Nefertiti had a crush on Charlie Ho-tep before I had met her the "first" time which just came across as confusing).
    I think the basic plot was interesting, but the way it was revealed was awkward. I think it would have been easier to follow the narrative if it had unfolded linearly.

    If it had been that Sam and Max weren't just watching the story unfold, but actually inhabiting their ancestors and experiencing it for themselves I think it would have worked out better. Instead of Sammeth and Maximus
    experiencing puzzle-dependent amnesia when it came time to escape Kringle's attack in the tomb
    , it would have actually been Sam and Max going, "How did our great-grandpas get out of this one?" Sammeth and Maximus acted exactly like Sam and Max anyway, so it wouldn't have been that big of a change.

    Of course, I'm the anal-over-analyzer type, so I'm probably the only person bothered by this kind of narrative nitpickiness! :p And I still like that they decided to do something different with this episode. The fact that they're not content to just go with the same old, same old is one of the things I love best about Telltale after all.
  • edited May 2010
    I sorta feel the same. 301 was a bit meh, it didn't really do anything special. 302 was annoying, I always knew exactly what I had to do, but had to fiddle around in dialogue menus to be able to do it.

    I didn't like 201,202 or 101,102,103 at all though, so it is a better start. That being said, I was expecting it to be to the quality of Monkey Island in terms of puzzles, and I just haven't seen that.

    Get the person who did MI Ep 4 to do a Sam and Max episode, that episode had the best puzzles ever.
  • edited May 2010
    Sam and Max storylines are srs bsns, guys.
  • edited May 2010
    THIS IS BLASPHEMY! No, really, Episode 2 wasn't that bad. You people should stop trying to bring back the "Episode 2 is always the worst Episode". It looks to me that you're all trying to find the worst possible things in the Episode and then pick at it. Let it go, move on.

    It's just a different Sam & Max adventure. It was just to shake things up a bit. Stop harping on it.
  • edited May 2010
    splash1 wrote: »
    THIS IS BLASPHEMY! No, really, Episode 2 wasn't that bad. You people should stop trying to bring back the "Episode 2 is always the worst Episode". It looks to me that you're all trying to find the worst possible things in the Episode and then pick at it. Let it go, move on.

    It's just a different Sam & Max adventure. It was just to shake things up a bit. Stop harping on it.

    What, so we're not entitled to a little criticism of the game? It was allright, but it wasn't perfect.
  • edited May 2010
    Fury wrote: »
    What, so we're not entitled to a little criticism of the game? It was allright, but it wasn't perfect.

    Criticisms' one thing, but when everyone jumps in and finds everything they didn't like about the game, and then stretch it out so that goes on for 5 scrolls; then that's when it comes to "Tear the game down".
  • edited May 2010
    splash1 wrote: »
    Criticisms' one thing, but when everyone jumps in and finds everything they didn't like about the game, and then stretch it out so that goes on for 5 scrolls; then that's when it comes to "Tear the game down".

    It's only 2 scrolls long
  • edited May 2010
    Fury wrote: »
    It's only 2 scrolls long

    And to be fair, a scroll is only about 2 posts most of the time.
  • edited May 2010
    Lena_P wrote: »
    If it had been that Sam and Max weren't just watching the story unfold, but actually inhabiting their ancestors and experiencing it for themselves I think it would have worked out better. Instead of Sammeth and Maximus
    experiencing puzzle-dependent amnesia when it came time to escape Kringle's attack in the tomb
    , it would have actually been Sam and Max going, "How did our great-grandpas get out of this one?" Sammeth and Maximus acted exactly like Sam and Max anyway, so it wouldn't have been that big of a change.

    This is what I thought was going on at first, but after playing through the rest of the game and thinking about it, I'm ... not sure. It almost feels like a bit of both were going on at the same time, but ... maybe not? I don't really know. Like you said, going with Option 1 (they relived it!) presents problems due to what looks like some weird instances of selective amnesia. Option 2 (body possession!) makes more sense overall, but there's little-to-nothing in the episode itself to support this. I end up wanting to say "all of the above," if only because it's never really explained. I kind of wish it was, even if Sam & Max by nature doesn't necessitate a tight and logically-consistent plot.

    Aside from that, the jumbled timeline worked pretty well for me from both a puzzle and storytelling perspective.
    Lena_P wrote: »
    Of course, I'm the anal-over-analyzer type, so I'm probably the only person bothered by this kind of narrative nitpickiness! :p

    Hey, I resemble that remark! :p But that aside, I think a touch of "de gustibus non est disputandum" comes into play here along with nitpickiness. The former of which being both inevitable and good, and the latter being an admirable trait more often than most of us would like to believe. ;)
    Lena_P wrote: »
    And I still like that they decided to do something different with this episode. The fact that they're not content to just go with the same old, same old is one of the things I love best about Telltale after all.

    110% agreed.
  • edited May 2010
    And the "Cake vs Pie" thread in the general chat forum was posted six days after this thread and has more than twice as many pages.
  • edited May 2010
    Lena_P wrote: »
    And the "Cake vs Pie" thread in the general chat forum was posted six days after this thread and has more than twice as many pages.

    Wait, what is this referring to? who are you talking to? and what does this have to do with being disappointed? im confused :confused:
  • edited May 2010
    splash1 said "everyone's" posting "five scrolls" worth of posts about what they didn't like about episode two is the same as "tear(ing) the game down". I was trying to point out there have actually been very few complaints and that a discussion about the merits of different baked goods and pastries has actually garnered far more interest. I don't think he has to worry about a few folks complaining since it seems the majority of players loved the episode.
  • edited May 2010
    I guess everyone's different. I found the writing better in this one, but there did seem to be less of the following:
    1) click something you know is unimportant, 2) sam says something, 3) max says something witty in response.

    It felt like there were a million of these items in season 1, in settings such as their office.

    Yes- I totally agree. I think the writing is great in the current season (and the storytelling possibly better). But there is less back and forth between Sam and Max. Previously, I would be amused by them talking to each other as much as I would be amused solving the puzzles and progressing the story. There was a real sense of their friendship and it was truly delightful.
  • edited May 2010
    I actually loved 301 and 302, but found almost no references to pop culture and, you know, stuff you would think is in a Sam & Max media.
    Season 3 is probably less random, and this is both a good and a bad thing.

    You look at 201 and you see a giant singing robot that sings popular songs, and a "Torture me Elmer" doll, you know what I mean.
  • edited May 2010
    Off the top of my bonce, these are my thoughts on the series so far

    LOVE
    Presentation - film grain, directing, general art-style.
    More locations per-episode than any other TT game.
    The story overall (up to now).
    Skunkape (and the toilet humour that went with the whole of The Penal Zone).
    Return of the map.
    Soundtrack.

    DISLIKE
    The dialogue doesn't seem quite as funny/random, particularly in episode 2. This could just be due to the setting though.
    I feel like every character plays a big role in the game and pop up everywhere you go. In older adventure games (sorry!) there were a lot of characters that would only stay in one place (like a kiosk, bridge etc) and would simply provide you with a short exchange of dialogue and maybe an item.
    A lot less inventory items and less clickable but useless scenery items.
    The mole-people and their screechy voices (I guess they'll be in every episode. Shame. I'll get used to them).
  • edited May 2010
    I feel like every character plays a big role in the game and pop up everywhere you go. In older adventure games (sorry!) there were a lot of characters that would only stay in one place (like a kiosk, bridge etc) and would simply provide you with a short exchange of dialogue and maybe an item.

    I think that's one of the downside of voiced games. Every character needs a different voice, so you tend to have less very minor characters because you'd need to give them their own voice (and in some cases get an actor just for them), and of course you can't go as wild with the amount of dialogue as you would if it was only text.
    I think when you write a game and you know it's going to be voiced, you kind of adapt your writing to that, if I'm making sense.

    Of course in this specific case there might also be the same thing with models. Re-using models rather than creating new ones probably takes less room.
  • edited May 2010
    My only issue with Season 3 is I fear they will continue the whole "Max has psychic powers!" bit on to future seasons. Don't get me wrong, its a cool idea and interesting gameplay mechanic. However, its a drastic character change for the Max we all already have come to love over the years. They should keep max has having an importance to the puzzles. I just don't know if using a drastic character change is such a great idea.

    That and its annoying having to switch to Sam in order to reposition Max if something you want to cast on isn't in view.
  • edited May 2010
    LOVE
    Everything.

    That's right, I have no complaints whatsoever. 'The Penal Zone' and 'The Tomb of Sammun-Mak' are my two favourite Sam & Max episodes yet. They even outdo 'Chariot of the Dogs', which I thought was an absolute classic. I dunno, I just really like the whole feel of season 3 so far. It's hard to put my finger on the reason; whether it's the writing, the locations, the characters, the storyline, the deeper plot, the glimpses of darkness (end of episode 2), the puzzles, the psychic powers or the brilliant interface and gameplay, I don't know, but I've never enjoyed playing Sam & Max as much as I have in The Devil's Playhouse. I really hope that Telltale continues whatever it is their doing to make this season so great because I'm loving it.
  • edited May 2010
    Dallen wrote: »
    My only issue with Season 3 is I fear they will continue the whole "Max has psychic powers!" bit on to future seasons.

    I don't think they will, I suspect the powers will be all wrapped up and explained by the end of the season.
  • edited May 2010
    Sam will wake up and it was all a dream, perhaps?

    Just kidding, that's the worst ending possible ;)
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