Hit the Road...kinda sucks?
After having played all three Telltale seasons, read Surfin' The Highway and watched the Animated Series DVD, I played Hit the Road again, and by comparison it just seems a bit...bland.
Obviously it's still an excellent and funny game, and a LucasArts classic, but as a part of the Sam and Max franchise, it just doesn't appeal to me as much as the other adaptations do. Sam looks and sounds utterly bored and depressed, and neither him nor Max have nearly the amount of energy or enthusiasm that I've grown to love from the other adaptations. One of my favourite things about Sam and Max is how they bounce off each other, and it's clear whenever they have conversations that they've been friends for a long time. This is very obvious in the comics right from the start of Monkeys Violating the Holy Temple, and yet In Hit the Road I just don't feel it at all.
I'm not dissing the voice actors, I think they're great (Nick Jameson always makes me laugh in Day of the Tentacle with "Have them wait on the bench in the LAAAAAAABBY!!!!!") and what we saw of them in Freelance Police!! was much better. It just seems as though their characterization was off in this game, and part of the Sam and Max magic that I feel with other adaptations is missing.
I suppose we have Telltale to thank, for bringing Sam and Max closer to how they were in the comics, and also exploring new depths of their relationship with They Stole Max's Brain and
Anyway, cue the angry mob with torches and pitchforks, led on by Lattsam.
Obviously it's still an excellent and funny game, and a LucasArts classic, but as a part of the Sam and Max franchise, it just doesn't appeal to me as much as the other adaptations do. Sam looks and sounds utterly bored and depressed, and neither him nor Max have nearly the amount of energy or enthusiasm that I've grown to love from the other adaptations. One of my favourite things about Sam and Max is how they bounce off each other, and it's clear whenever they have conversations that they've been friends for a long time. This is very obvious in the comics right from the start of Monkeys Violating the Holy Temple, and yet In Hit the Road I just don't feel it at all.
I'm not dissing the voice actors, I think they're great (Nick Jameson always makes me laugh in Day of the Tentacle with "Have them wait on the bench in the LAAAAAAABBY!!!!!") and what we saw of them in Freelance Police!! was much better. It just seems as though their characterization was off in this game, and part of the Sam and Max magic that I feel with other adaptations is missing.
I suppose we have Telltale to thank, for bringing Sam and Max closer to how they were in the comics, and also exploring new depths of their relationship with They Stole Max's Brain and
the ending of Season 3.
Anyway, cue the angry mob with torches and pitchforks, led on by Lattsam.
Sign in to comment in this discussion.
Comments
More seriously, I can understand where you're coming from, but have to disagree. Hit the Road remains my favorite Sam & Max game, I think the voices and characterisation are perfect, the writing and banter great, though it is somewhat more limited. And given that Purcell was involved in much closer work on Hit the Road than with any of the TTG's efforts and its based on one of the comics, it seems far more like the comics than any of the others to me. I dunno, maybe because Hit the Road was my first exposure to Sam & Max - and computer gaming in general - it remains the definitive version for me.
I don't really like the voice acting in Hit the Road. It was good in the ol' days perhaps. What's getting on my nerves is that there is actually a bunch of people wishing to get the old VA cast back for a future installment of the franchise. Those people are even boycotting The Devil's Playhouse, but since most of us don't even know about them they're just playing in their own little circle. Their arrogance really gets me angry though, I mean, they just oppose because they want to oppose. But my GOD, the VAs are 60 years old now! Leave them alone, they did their jobs.
Oh... and... erm, yeah, voice acting was actually pretty bland and monotone, but I guess that's the charm of it. Sam and Max are pretty sarcastic characters and they're left unsurprised by the stuff that normal people would be surprised. What would surprise THEM, is, well, not in the game. Explosions, beating up stuff... Instead, the creators wanted the game to be a cult, something opposing our reality and even mocking our beliefs. But Telltale series didn't aim for that, you know. Hit the Road is not there just because they wanted us to see how Sam and Max deals with a bigfoot, they wanted us to see how completely absurd the world (mainly USA) can be. But Save the World, for example, wanted to show us exactly how Sam and Max deals with hypnotism, and made their jokes about absurdity only whenever the timing is right.
I think you're referring to just one guy who tends to post the same stuff with multiple accounts. He may have picked up a supporter or two, I guess.
I've seen many other people on sites such as DeviantArt or Facebook, so...
Ethics suck, dog.
My ass.
This.
YEAH!!! *quickly hides "Bring Back Earl Boen in Monkey Island" leaflets*
(greenheadphones drew this, not me)
I wouldn't say that it sucks; I do like it a lot; but the Telltale games appeal to me more. Hit the Road doesn't focus much on character, and that's one of my favourite parts of a comedy. So it just seems, like Teeth said, bland. The jokes are still really funny, but they don't grip me because they're not character driven enough.
Also, I never understood how Conroy Bumpus could love collecting things with grotesque features and have no interest in Sam and Max.
My first exposure to Sam & Max was Telltale's Season 1, so the older game doesn't appeal to me. It's not about graphics as much as characterization and the voices.
When you expect to hear a certain voice out of a character and it comes out different it's a little jarring. You get used to it, but you can't help noticing the differences.
Which is why I suppose people who played Hit the Road first like it so much, because it was their first experience with the characters, and why those of us who first encountered them in Telltale's version have a different reaction.
It's unfair to compare them really, they were made by different companies with different actors in different time periods.
They're almost entirely different games. The characters are the main connection, and if you didn't first encounter them in Hit the Road it will always feel different.
So ... I was watching some clips from a Hit the Road playthrough a while back, and it was the first time I had taken a close look at the game since reading through Surfin' the Highway. So it finally struck me just how much most everything -- the dialogue especially -- mirrored the comics' sensibilities. HtR is about as close to a direct transplant of the comics into an adventure game as possible. (The fact that it's 2D doesn't hurt either.) Sam & Max is also one of the very few franchises-turned-old-school-adventure-games where the esoteric nature of the puzzles are largely justified. Beyond Time and Space is much more my speed in terms of difficulty, but there's an inherently Sam & Max-ish charm to HtR's puzzle solutions that's hard not to like, however frustrating the gameplay got for me at times.
It's little wonder HtR is considered a classic. I certainly think it is. And it's aged better than a lot of its contemporaries.
But you know what? Honestly? I just enjoy the Telltale games more. Even through the weaksauce weakness which is most of Season 3's puzzles.
It boils down to the type of storytelling and characterization I like best. Seasons 1 and 2 strike those chords with me better than HtR because the characters (including the title ones) feel more fleshed out and more like they're actually in the thick of whatever craziness they've got themselves involved with this time. And even as I sorely missed Season 2's level of difficulty, I was on cloud nine with TDP's approach to, that's right, storytelling and characterization -- even more so than the first two seasons. And since, for me, stellar writing and a strong story can elevate an adventure game that's otherwise found wanting on the puzzle design front ... well, there you go.
As for faithfulness to the comics: thesporkman kind of hit on what I was thinking. Like the cartoon (oh boy, I have a feeling I'll get into trouble bringing that up, but I think it's a valid comparison), the Telltale games feel more like an interpretation of the characters and their world rather than a direct adaptation. Which is fine with me. I love and cherish the comics as much as the games; yet from an adventure gaming perspective, and for reasons that largely have to do with what I talked about above, I've ended up enjoying Telltale's approach to Sam & Max more than HtR's thoroughly faithful one. You could say that maintaining the core of what makes Sam & Max "tick" is far more important to me than being as faithful to the source material as possible.
... This reminds me of a thought I've had about Season 3 being both more and less like the comics than either of the previous seasons. But this post is long enough, so maybe I'll come back to that another time, in another thread.
But ... we can at least be amicable acquaintances, right? Like, the kind who don't shout "NO U" and throw empty beer cans at each other whenever we disagree on something?
I'm pretty sure the "sucks" part wasn't meant to be taken all that seriously. Especially when the OP goes on to say that HtR is "an excellent and funny" game. It's just not as much to his/her taste as the Telltale games. This also seems to be true of everyone else who's been agreeing with Teeth so far (myself included).
Hmm, never thought of that. I'll have to look at a playthrough or fire up the game again, but I got the impression that Bumpus was too fixated on Trixie and Bruno for Idiot Ball-induced reasons to care about anything other than getting them back. Or maybe after meeting Sam and Max properly at the Gator Golf course, he decided they were too much trouble to bother with. And I wonder how "normal" Sam and Max would be considered in their world, at least the way HtR imagines it? Hmm ...
I do think that's a factor for a lot of people, but it's not always the case. Different fandom, but I know many people who were introduced to a manga through its less-than-faithful anime adaption, and still came away after reading the manga liking the source material much better. Even when the adaptation was widely acclaimed. So I tend to trust personal preferences as a gauge for what version of something someone will enjoy best over what he/she was exposed to first.
Ah, I see! So ... we can not throw those things at each other instead. A'ight?
Wait. I think we could make a good game of Modified Fizzball out of that stuff.
Never mind! Game on.
I still like the game, and I like the Hit the Road vocal performances, but I enjoy Sam & Max Season Two a lot more (I'm not quite sure where to put The Devil's Playhouse on my enjoyment list. It's certainly the most varied and most polished game, but I missed the absurd musical numbers, and catchy off-the-wall music of the first two seasons), and I prefer David Nowlin and William Kasten since they had several games to really get into the roles of the characters.
I would really love to see a special edition of Sam & Max Hit the Road though.
Every episode had Bosco change costumes, had Sybil in another job and had one new location. I thought the recurring characters and the story seemed a bit bland honestly.
After the first 5 episodes of season one, I took a big break on Telltale's Sam and Max, I just didn't like it that much.
After about a year or two I tried Season 2 and Boy did they get that one right!
It just felt more fleshed out, more alive. The recurring characters didn't just have a single change in their lives, they evolved, they dated or got more paranoïd. Sam and Max seemed more like their old selves again too, with Max's reaction at the end of Jimmy Two Teeth's puzzle in 201 leaving me baffled at how well they got the character.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Season 2 hit a mark (at least for me) where Sam and Max felt like their own selves again.
I've been thinking while writing this post, and I might even like season 2 more than Hit the Road, even though I've always looked at the Telltale season as a fun continuation, but not as good in terms of quality.
I like Season 3, but not as much as Season 2 though, Sam and Max seemed at their most Sam and Maxish there, and the wackiness from the comics was best translated into that season I think.
Wow, this post is getting longer and longer.
One more thing, the voice actors. I always thought Nick Jameson and Bill Farmer were the only incarnation of Sam and Max I'd truly like.
David Nowlin and William Kasten have, however, shown me otherwise. While Nick and Bill are still my favorites, I wouldn't trade in David and William for them. They've got the characters down to a tee.
These voices just belong to Telltale's version of Sam and Max, what might be funny though would be to have Nick and Bill reprise their roles like the way they would've done with the cartoon's voices in Freelance Police, having them appear as arch enemy's Sam and Max never knew they ever had.
I was first introduced to the Sam & Max franchise by Season One. The first episode was not, and still is not my favorite. I played that one, kinda liked it, but thought they could have done better. Maybe it had to do with Max's voice? (I really didn't like Max's voice in Culture Shock. It just bugged me.) So, I put it down for a while and focused on school. Then, summer rolled around and I finished the season and fell in love with Sam & Max (not literally, obviously, that would be weird).
Then I bought Season Two and finished that. I was surprised how well they had done on that season compared to the first one. By then, I was pretty used to the voices and characters.
Upon finishing Season Two, I learned about the existence of Hit the Road. I had heard of it before, but I wasn't too sure exactly what it was until I read a little more into it. My first thought was, "Oh, yay! More Sam & Max!" and I played that one.
Now don't get me wrong, I love that game. I love the voices. I love the puzzles. But I love it like I would love a completely different franchise not related to Sam & Max. A lot of people who have read the comics claim that Hit the Road is more like them than Telltale's version. In my opinion, Telltale's version is more like the comics.
Same thing with the animated series. I loved it, just more like a different franchise.
The only thing, to me, that feels 100% true to the Sam & Max universe is, of course, the comics, but Telltale did a bang-up job, in my opinion, and their games are my favorite.
Having recently talked to Conroy, I think I've found the answer. He's not into creatures with grotesque features, but woodland creatures. Since Sam and Max live in an office block and not the woods, I'll assume this is why Conroy doesn't want them.
Proof in this link (I made it as a link opposed to showing the picture in this thread just in case anyone thinks it's spoilerish for Hit the Road):
http://i52.tinypic.com/m9vm08.jpg
The thing I don't get with Hit the Road is that is was unlucky enough to have most locations I found kinda meh or didn't care for, especially the Cirus and that weird place. And the music wasn't as rememorable for me, thought the Conroy Bumpus song was genius, and there were one or two locations that had catchy music. The thing that gets me most about Hit the Road is the uneventful ending really, the game feels like a set plan of puzzles and then, it just ends.
As for the cartoon, I hate hate hate Sam's voice, Harvey Atkin reminds me too much of his previous voice work as King Koopa to be able to think of him as Sam... too loud and gravelly. Max is okay.