Sam and Max: Beyond Time and Space Review

Having never delved into the darkest descents of point and click strategy games before, this was quite a chore for this player. Sam and Max features an adorable dog and rabbit companion, detectives who begin their latest adventure by being attacked by a massive robot thing. Now, even the beginning to the game (which would normally take a veteran gamer a few minutes to solve) took me a couple of hours, and to be honest with you, it didn’t tickle or satisfy my tastebuds at all.

Allow me to explain my reasons: while the game looks vibrant, colourful and attractive, it felt extremely childish both due to the character’s design, animations, gameplay and general story and plotline. Without spoiling the story too much, the first level involves Santa sending the big robot killing machine to kill you both and your pair of investigators are sent in a flying police car to lapland at the North Pole to stop a gun wielding Santa from ruining Xmas after he went loopy making evil toys…

See what I mean? Okay, it makes a change from the usual gun toting gung ho murdering that I’m more accustomed to, but the game felt punishing as it left very, very little clues for an amateur player like me to get into a rhythm, and as the game felt like it was designed for their audience to play in between soiling their underwear, I felt like a bit of an idiot.

I just don’t get these games, they feel cheaply made and if you could lose the point and click element, I feel you could shrink the prospective 40hours game time to just a few hours. The games industry has moved on leaps and bounds, and this just feels antiquated but alas, like I said this is just not my sort of game.
What I will say though, is if you are a massive fan of Sam and Max, there’s plenty of stuff to do, it’s cartoony atmosphere is genuinely pleasant to be in and the music is satisfyingly methodic, in a creepy childish sort of way. That’s the nearest I can get to a compliment to it, but giving it the benefit of the doubt and agreeing to NEVER play the bloody thing again, I’ll happily give what’s there a 6 out of 10.