PC Review – Sam & Max Season Two: Ice Station Santa

by Andrew Podolsky on November 8, 2007 at 3:02 am

The new season of S&M is finally upon us, and gamers are fortunate that episodic adventure games have finally advanced to this point. Ice Station Santa, a warped Christmas story that plays on elements of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and, inexplicably, The Exorcist, is riotously funny and very easy to get into.

Lack of accessibility is perhaps what killed the adventure genre years ago, but Sam and Max Season Two has found an excellent balance between goofy puzzles and gentle guidance. The in-game hint system is a lifesaver, in the form of comments from Max when the player gets stuck or is unsure what to do next. You can set the difficulty on a one to five scale, and I opted for regular hints because I tend to get extremely frustrated by dead-end adventures.

Ice Station Santa, however, starts strong and keeps the momentum moving until the final cheeky scenes. After a destructive Christmas present sends Sam and Max to investigate the North Pole, they find that Santa is in need of some spiritual reclamation. Just when you think you’ve got the situation under control, however, your task becomes much more complex, forcing Sam and Max to save Christmas several times over.

Among the usual collecting of items to be used elsewhere, some of S&M’s tasks include reflex-testing action minigames. Swerving into a number of “Torture Me Elmer” dolls on the road or coaching a Boxing Betty doll to knock out a roster of rat fighters are nice additions to the puzzle solving. It’s always great to see Sam and Max in fast, fun, arcade minigames that break up the episode’s pacing.

For the most part, the emphasis in Sam and Max is on the storytelling, the humor, and the characters. Recurring characters Sybil Pandemik and Lincoln’s Giant Stone Head are now an item, and Inconvenience Store owner Bosco has ditched his disguise and is using his trillions to buy high-tech surveillance equipment. Jimmy Two Teeth is still boxing his inner demons and balancing his work life and family, and a new character, the waitress of Stinky’s, is hilarious in her customer-demeaning ways.

Ice Station Santa lasts about 4-5 hours, depending on how much clever dialogue you want to hear or weird background items you want to click on, and the hint system is recommended for lowering the amount of downtime. The game seems to be just the right length, and with only two months to go until episode 2 of season 2, there won’t be long until we get to see what happens next. From what we know, the next episode is not about Easter, but Easter Island.

A special mention should be made of the music, which is spectacular in its range and tone. The jazzy Sam and Max theme song and a “crazy Christmas” jingle that plays at the North Pole are among the highlights, not to mention “The Happy Demon Song”.

While adventure gaming still has its pratfalls, like aimless wandering or illogical puzzles, Sam and Max does its best to minimize these problems while bringing to life some of the funniest and most likable characters in a game series. There are hundreds of in-jokes for established fans, but Ice Station Santa succeeds because it is completely accessible for newcomers as well. Don’t miss this gift from the thoughtful elves at Telltale.