Sam & Max Episode 202: Moai Better Blues

"Occasionally confusing, but well made and continues to drive the season forward."

Last December, Sam & Max returned with oversized guns blazing in "Ice Station Santa" for the first Season Two in gaming history. This follows their milestone as the first Season One in gaming history, and perhaps most importantly, the first truly successful venture in practical episodic gaming. That "practical" point is what excludes Valve from the runnings -- as good as the Half-Life 2 episodes are, the only reason the gaming community tolerates their release schedules is the company's unbendingly high standard for the development process. Gabe Newell goes to bed each night on a pile of money; one month off the deadline or twelve, he's not worried about his episodes losing momentum or distribution. But as the foray into the world of SiN proved, not all developers can be so lucky, and Valve's self-sufficient business model being an anomaly at best, episodic gaming seemed to be dangerous and unviable. Until Telltale Games came along, that is.

Season 1 was a bit rough around the edges getting started, but still amusing and entertaining with a few devious puzzles, so when Ice Station Santa came out, I was prepared to be similarly amused and entertained. I wasn't expecting it to be about ten times better than what had come before it. That was a very exciting moment, where I realized that episodic gaming was not only possible, but that it could do new things with the medium, could work within an existing, already-developed framework to quickly respond to current events like a topical TV show, could improve incrementally rather than trying to adapt learned lessons from one full game to another that may have different goals altogether.

Now it's January and we come to Season 2, Episode 2 of a genuine episodic game series: Moai Better Blues. Following the theme set by the first episode of this season, the game begins with the neighborhood under attack by some impossibly powerful and/or mysterious force. In the last game, it was a giant robot sent by Santa Claus; here, Sam and Max find themselves facing the Bermuda Triangle, a giant portal that chases people and sucks them into it. The portal leads to Easter Island, where everything that's gone missing from the world eventually turned up (there's a great moment where a crate full of copies of a certain OTHER video game that had its last installment in the mid-90s, new sequel yet to be released, is discovered by the duo). With Santa Claus and now the Bermuda Triangle, it seems that mythological phenomena is the theme of this season, and as season-spanning threats go, it's not a bad pick.

This particular episode can become a little confusing at times, both in the references it makes (I had to look up Glenn Miller on Wikipedia, and I'm still not entirely sure who the other two babies were with Amelia Earhart) and in the internalized rules it has for its puzzle structure. These are explained in the early section as kind of a throwaway gag and feature again at varying levels of obscurity, but aren't very concretely referenced along the way. I had to look up one puzzle solution involving a gong in Stinky's that made absolutely no sense until I recalled what someone had said very early on, and wasn't mentioned again. It can be easy to miss necessary items if you don't FULLY explore EVERY area and interactable object, even the ones that seem redundant after seven previous episodes -- this reeks a little of old-school adventure gaming, in the days where the player was apparently expected to progress by reading the developer's mind. Specific example: If you haven't played Ice Station Santa, you won't know that the C.O.P.S. from Reality 2.0 are in the garage at the end of the neighborhood, and even if you have, you might not realize that they have a unique purpose in each Season 2 episode, and that their minigame grants you a necessary item for solving another puzzle. These weren't gamebreakers by any means, nor do they ever approach the madness of Sierra or Westwood, but the individual pieces don't always connect as intuitively as they have in the past.

While Moai Better Blues isn't quite as good as Ice Station Santa, it maintains Season Two's sharper wit and more elaborate environments and puzzles. The puzzles may occasionally be obscure, but the game has its own internal logic and follows it consistently. Many of the interactable objects seem intimidating when you first happen upon them (the portals especially), because you know that trial and error would be extremely tedious here if it turns out the developers aren't going to introduce you to what their use is. But for the most part, they're gentle, and some of the mischief you get into on the way to your goal is deliciously and unexpectedly dark, even for Sam & Max.

Another thing of note is that after six episodes of focusing on the neighborhood and including another location on the side, Season Two seems to be focused on putting most of the puzzles in the new environment and pushing the neighborhood to the back burner - while you still need to visit Bosco's and now Stinky's Diner (as a change of scenery from Sybil's, which, ironically has literally changed its scenery), the amount of time you spend wandering around there has been minimized. It's become a means to an end rather than the occupying obliviously large portions of game time that made Season One frustrating at times.

The rough spots I noticed may just as well be chalked up to personal preference in scenery and the way puzzles are derived naturally from concept. This could just be me, but I had more fun at the North Pole. At any rate, by this point in the series, the team has polished their game to a mirror shine; everyone knows their place in the development process and the sheer professionalism and quality of the writing and design negate just about any issues I might have with the individual concepts. The way I see it, Moai Better Blues is like a well-written episode of a TV show that isn't a personal favorite, but that's okay, because I love the show and it hasn't put out a bad episode yet. The next episode is less than a month away, so even when I like one a little less than my favorites, it's still an integral part of the overall experience and has a role to play. And that is an insanely cool new dynamic for video games.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/18/08

Game Release: Sam & Max Episode 202: Moai Better Blues (US, 01/10/08)