Sam & Max Hit the Road

"Witness the greatness of Nature!... with a Dog and a Rabbit..."

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the freak show! Paraphrasing Edguy, these are the best fitting words for this hilarious adventure game by Lucasarts. This title offers a different kind of humour, putting in slight references to the real world (as the adventure takes place in the United States), and for this reason this game is not to be played by kids. Oh, I meant, it's quite easy to finish but I remember playing it at the age of 7 and not being able to understand a single pun, but now, at the admirable age of 15, I've played it again and was finally able to understand every witticism. Let's say that LucasArts diverges a bit from the usual funny environment we're used to to switch to a darker humour, there being a pessimist flavour in every dialogue, but still characterized by the merriment of a comic adventure game.

Now, LucasArts also diverges from the SCUMM system it invented and utilized for most of its adventure games, for example Monkey Island (1 & 2) and Indiana Jones & The Fate Of Atlantis: basically with this system you get a list of performable actions in the lower left part of the screen, like Look at, Pick up, Talk, Give, Walk and such. Sam & Max, on the contrary, offers a dynamic pointer: with a right click you can switch its appearance and by so doing you can do the usual actions: speaking, picking up items, using something... plus you get a full inventory (you can access it by clicking on the box icon at the lower left edge of your game screen) instead of the lower right list of items like in other LucasArts games. Overall, graphics are very toonish and coloured and you get to see lots of funny looking and awkward looking characters (not to mention their rave dialogues...). There are even some cute cutscenes but nothing spectacular. For the first time we don't get to see so many pixels, especially with characters... I'm not speaking of anti-aliasing but still you won't get frustrated by seeing a big block of tiny electronic squares instead of a well-designed character.

But what makes this game so enjoyable and amusing? Surely its storyline tagged with a dark humour not suitable for kids: not that there are swear words, imprecations, sexual references or anything, it's just that kids won't be able to understand it, since it mainly focuses on politic and social themes. Nonetheless if you're able to understand it, it'll surely get you off your chair rolling on the floor laughing! That's what happened with me, at least. Consider you're controlling a brown dog and a white rabbit (anti-racism, anyone? Animalistic references?) during the whole adventure: they'll be seldom separated as they can't live without each other (and still they pick up on each other whenever they can). What do these two do, actually? They're policemen, well, to tell the truth they (on with alliterations!) are private eyes, working in their own office and solving (demented) cases. Guess the whole deal? You get to solve another demented case. Well, no, I wasn't fair, this time the case could seem demented again, but to be honest, it's really deep and mainly focuses on animalist and ecological themes: you'll have to deal with a country star fond of subjugation, a relegated tribe of halfmen trying not to be captured and killed and... a bungee jumping station set right into the presidents' noses on Mt. Rushmore (and a freak show in an amusement park, just to link to the first paragraph- oh, you have to save one of those monsters).

Basically this isn't an hard game: it's very linear even if you get to visit places often (there aren't many anyway), the storyline is quite deep and enjoyable and there aren't frustrating situations except for one where you have to hit the right spot at the right moment (and you'll find yourself loading lots of times before succeeding). The 2 main characters are absolutely great and so are the side characters and the villains; dialogues and humour are superb and they perfectly fit with the storyline. Nowadays LucasArts mentioned a sequel but promptl rejected the idea... so don't wait for a game that might never arrive! Run at the (retrogaming) shelves to buy this game at once!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/28/05