RipTen Videogame Blog » Telltale-Games

Guy Lends Sweet Jurassic Park Jeep to Telltale Games, Gets It Back Damaged, Telltale Responds

Dave Oshry — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:00:21 +0000

As you may or may not know, Telltale Games Jurassic Park is coming out tomorrow.

What you certainly may not know is that they used a sweet Jurassic Park Jeep to promote their game at PAX Prime 2011.

What you definitely don’t know is that the Jeep was loaned to them by a man from Colorado who shall henceforth be known as Boomerjinks.

Here’s his story:

Earlier this summer I was contacted by a representative from TellTale Games.They informed me that they were developing a Jurassic Park adventure title for multiple platforms and were looking for a JP Jeep that they could use in a promotional booth at a Seattle gaming convention called PAX in August.

Last year they had produced a Back to the Future game and used the DeLorean that belongs to a acquaintance of mine. As I was unsure how to respond, I contacted my DeLorean owner friend and asked him what kind of deal they approached him with. He said he asked TellTale for insured, enclosed transport -both ways- for his car, airfare, hotel, con passes, and daily per diem. He also received several grand from them for the use of the car alone.

So I was all like “That sounds terrific! If you provide enclosed, insured shipping both ways, airfare, badges for the con, hotel, and per diem then you’ve got yourself a deal!”

They were pretty appreciative of me providing the Jeep to them for free, so they booked transport for my Jeep and we were on our way.

Then I was off to meet the enclosed transport! Except the transport showed up and was NOT enclosed! I could have been a dick and said, “No dice, friends” and not given them the Jeep. But unfortunately I’m not a dick.

The Jeep goes on it’s way and I fly out a week later. The Jeep was delivered that morning and signed for by one TellTale’s employees, a self-professed “person who doesn’t know anything about cars and in fact does not even own a car!”

Here’s what I saw during my walkaround:

NOT COOL

After the walkaround, and before the convention, I talk to the guys at TellTale, among them Kevin Bruner, the company’s CEO. I tell them, “Look I could be “that guy” and throw a fit, threatening to take my Jeep out of here tonight unless you cut me a check right now, but I know this is a huge fuckinging weekend for you guys, that you need to promote your game and you’ve gone a ton of shit to worry about. So, we can but this on a back burner until the expo is over, but I’d like your word that you’ll take care of this immediately afterwards.” They were pretty appreciative, and even though I received no per diem or additional badges, I decided to not be a dick about things.

Then the Jeep came home, I didn’t hear from TellTale. A week later I reached out to them, and it was a few more days before they got back to me, telling me that I’d have to file a claim with the auto transport company (Advance Car Carrier Corp.). I told them that I did not arrange for the transportation, and that I should not have to be the middleman. They insist that they are not responsible for the damage in any way, and that only the car owner can file a claim.

So I send all my claim information (scanned receipts and delivery invoices, before and after photos) to the car carrier, and they reply with:

“We have completed our assessment of the above loss and have determined that this is not car carrier damage. After carefully reviewing the damage pictures that you have sent to us, we found that all the damages was noted on the Bill of Lading before transporting your vehicle. Also please note that vehicle was inspected in rain and possible that not all the damages were visible. For that reason the box, where it says that vehicle going ASIS was marked.

Enclosed with this letter is a copy of the Bill of Lading signed by “xxxx” on August 30, 2011 in where was noted that vehicle had pre-existing damages before transporting from WA to CO.”

Now, the damage was done on the way TO Seattle, not FROM. And here’s a photo of it “raining” while they loaded up my Jeep. http://i.imgur.com/IQLaK.jpg Sure is hard to see stuff with all that rain!

So TellTale hired the sketchiest-possible carrier company, and then one of TellTale’s employees(who admitted she doesn’t know the first thing about cars) signed the bill of lading upon delivery without inspecting the Jeep for damage, thereby releasing the car carrier from responsibility.

I’m disputing their decision, but I have the sinking feeling that I am going to be one of those cases that is just ignored until I go away. Bullshit man.

I guess my lesson is “next time get stuff in writing and be a big dick about everything.”

I haven’t heard from TellTale in months regarding this issue, it seems to be resolved as far as they are concerned. Now, the Jurassic Park game is set to be launched this week. I don’t really know if there’s anything I can do, but it seems like if there was ever a time for visibility on this problem, it’s now.

Oh, but there’s more…

Jurassic Park – First Screenshots Surface with Details

Telltale Spills Some Details on New Jurassic Park Game

Savvy Shopper Buys Skyrim on Steam for $20

This Guy Had A Very Portal Christmas

Did You Know Diablo’s Deckard Cain Is A Kid From South Dakota?

RipTen Review: Jurassic Park: The Game: Episode One (iOS)

Jurassic Park – First Screenshots Surface with Details

Garrett Hartman — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 18:27:50 +0000

Thanks to the latest issue of Game Informer, the first screenshots of Telltale’s new Jurassic Park Game have surfaced. We have them here for you to see.

According to Game informer the game is going to be dark and serious. You play the role of a park employee and it takes place right after the first movie. Gameplay will mix action sequences, puzzles, and Quick Time Events.

Photo scans courtesy of our friends over at Playfont .

Enjoy.

Telltale Spills Some Details on New Jurassic Park Game

Dave Oshry — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:26:49 +0000

Telltale games, the studio behind the recent Back to the Future game – is also working on the next Jurassic Park game. Well, now we’ve got some new details.

They’ve spilled some beans to Game Informer (doesn’t everyone?) and someone was nice enough to make a list of them over at NeoGaf:

* Story takes place during and directly after the first movie.
* Gameplay mostly inspired by Heavy Rain. While not stated outright, the preview seems to imply that action sequences will be QTE. Moreover, some choices will have consequences, although not as meaningful as in Heavy Rain.
* There will be puzzles, but there are no examples.
* The main character is not named in the preview, but from the screens, appears to be park staff.
* No major movie characters will appear (specifically: no Grant, no Malcolm, no Sattler). Some bit players will, however, like the chief veterinarian.
* Five episodes.
* The art design is realistic – much better looking than CSI from the screens, but far from Heavy Rain quality of course ;)
* RELEASE DATE: Spring 2011
* No word on which consoles will get it. Other than that, PC and Mac obviously.

Inspired by Heavy Rain? Not sure how we feel about that. Five episodes? Cool. Release date this spring? Very cool.

Back to the Future: The Game Hits This Week

Dylan Duarte — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:46:06 +0000

Great Scott! Ripten readers, on Wednesday, December 22nd (“tomorrow” doesn’t sound as dramatic), I’m sending you back – to the future! The first installment of Telltale Games’s Back to the Future: The Game will be hitting Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

The game is scheduled to hit PlayStation 3 and the iPad in the near future, but no specific date has been hammered down. Telltale Games developed the well-received Sam and Max titles, which were also produced episodically, so diehard fans of BTTF need not worry.

The plot follows Marty on another adventure to save Doc, who’s stranded somewhere in time. Oh Emmett, you’re incorrigible!

Silicon Era

Get a Free Copy of Back to the Future From Telltale Games

Bryce Wilson — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 06:13:56 +0000

Quite a while ago it was announced that Telltale Games would be working on both a Jurassic Park and Back to the Future set of chapter based games, and now Telltale Games is giving away the first chapter for free. To be eligible all you have to do is click here and sign up for an account, then when the content launches you will recieve an email with a redemption key.

So what are you waiting for, sign up! Besides, who doesn’t want free stuff!?

Possible Back to the Future Game Scenarios Revealed by Telltale Survey

David Oxford — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:52:48 +0000

We learned recently that Telltale Games, well known for their work on popular titles such as Sam & Max, the recent Tales of Monkey Island remakes, and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People, recently acquired the license to create episodic games based on Back to the Future. Short of a Winter 2010 release, we knew nothing more about these games, but that changes today.

Perhaps inspired by the recent Ghostbusters: The Video Game, it appears that the folks at Telltale have elected not to retell the story seen in the movies people know and love so well. Instead, it appears that they are considering a number of different, new scenarios for Doctor Emmett Lathrop “Doc” Brown and his young friend/assistant, Marty McFly, to deal with.

And you can help!

No, we don’t mean in the way a player “helps” a video game hero accomplish their goals (though that, too, will come), but by helping Telltale through a survey which lists several possible scenarios for them to apply to the game. Some of those are:

…November 5th, 2010. Working together, Teen Marty, Doc, and Present Day Marty finally corner the man who made off with Doc’s Time Train. While they argue about what to do with the well-intentioned time-hopper, a scary black vehicle appears out of nowhere. A familiar bulky presence steps out and confronts them. ‘Detective Tannen, Temporal Preservation Squadron.’ I’m afraid you’re all under arrest’…

…June 18th, 1938. Young Emmett Brown is about to announce his engagement to gold-digging young woman, turning his back on scientific pursuits forever. If Marty and Doc can’t bust into the party and get a singular Jules Verne novel into his hands, Emmett will never invent the time machine, a possibility too horrible to contemplate. Maybe they can sneak in with the swing band…

…May 12th, 1986. After stopping Biff Jr. from getting in a fight with his time-displaced son, Marty leaves the dance floor and sneaks into Strickland’s office, looking for the keys to the detention hall. He doesn’t know how three teenagers from 2010 got their hands on a time-travelling Delorean, but the most important thing now is getting them locked up in one place before they mess up everyone’s future…assuming they haven’t already…

…June 11th, 1968. Weaving their way through the peace protestors outside the courthouse, Marty and Doc surreptitiously use Doc’s temporal scanners to look for the mssing objects scattered through time by the wreck of the Time Train. After a number of dangerous encounters with riot police and hippies, there’s only one artifact left… the remnants of the train’s flux capacitor… repurposed as a peace necklace.. around the neck of a VERY pregnant Loraine McFly. Marty suddenly remembers that he’s going to be born tomorrow…

In addition, the survey asks a lot of questions about what parts of the movies you liked, which ones you liked best, which characters you would want to play as and interact with, and a lot of other different elements of the series.

To take the survey yourself, simply click here.

Personally speaking, the third scenario really reminds me of Back to the Future: The Animated Series, which ran for two seasons on CBS back in the early 90′s (and again on the Fox Box in 2003). And maybe a little of the now (sadly)-defunctBack to the Future: The Ride at Universal Studios (which this writer never got to visit).

The first one sounds really interesting and fresh, at least from a Back to the Future perspective, while the fourth sounds like a classic BttF-styled plot. The second sounds… well, frankly absurd. I’m not even sure it would work within the BttF logic we know and love.

Still, potentially speaking, it sounds like a 50 percent chance of getting a Back to the Future game with a really good story, and a 75 percent chance of getting one that would be worth playing anyway. Lucky thing there’s little need to fire up the flux capacitor, since the first installment should be out in only a few months.

For those of you who say you’d rather just have Back to the Future Part IV, well, we’ll let Biff field that one:

See more of Tom Wilson’s antics here.

And finally, before anyone brings it up, no, this is not the month/year Marty arrived in the future; that was on October 21, 2015, 30 years from when the first movie was set (Doc likes “nice, round numbers” for this sort of thing).

Source: GoNintendo

Ripten Review: Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent

Demi Adejuyigbe — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:06:33 +0000

If there’s one thing Telltale Games does well, it’s storytelling. Between Sam & Max and the Monkey Island series, Telltale is the king of the narrative, as well as the point-and-click genre. Their newest series, Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent, employs Graham Annable’s sketchy 2D art style for the game, which looks great and fits the story very well. Telltale says the game is influenced by the Professor Layton series, and while the story and style won’t make you think of Layton, it is in fact very similar to the way Professor Layton works; but is it as good?

The game follows the titular Nelson Tethers, an agent of the FBI’s Puzzle Research Divison. (Hey, it’s totally a thing.) Tethers doesn’t see many cases in his field, until he gets a call from the White House asking him to investigate an incident at an eraser factory in the mysterious town of Scoggins, Minnesota.

Like most of of Telltale’s catalog the game is a point-and-click adventure, but with various puzzle elements, such as riddles, brain teasers, tessellations, and mazes. When you complete a puzzle, you get a star-based rating that judges how well you solved the puzzle, based on the number of hints you used and how many attempts it took to solve.

Finding pieces of gum increases the number of hints you are given to solve puzzles. You begin the game with 8, but depending on how you use them, you could run out of gum very quickly, or have a stockpile of already-been-chewed gum by the end of it all. After finishing the game’s 37 puzzles, I had only used five pieces of gum, and had about 25 pieces of gum left.

One of the things I didn’t like about the game was how much it felt more like an interactive film than an interactive video game. There was even one occasion where I found myself pressing the space bar to play after returning from a quick break. The game loses some of Telltale’s trademark interactivity by not being in 3D and allowing you to move around areas freely. It doesn’t ruin the game itself, as you’re given a radar that alerts you to all objects and NPCs in its radius so you can interact with them.

The puzzles naturally become more difficult as the game progresses, eventually escalating to a point where you feel incredibly dumb for not getting some solutions right away. However, sometimes you don’t get puzzles right away because the solutions just seem like they’re… wrong. For instance, there was one puzzle (solution spoiler) where I had to use hints to solve it, and the hints gave me a solution that didn’t at all look like it should fit. Closer to the end of the game, you start to have puzzles that just seem really gratuitous. Having puzzles like this added a degree of difficulty to the latter half of the game that made it a little less enjoyable.

While I enjoyed the voice acting, the stoic expression on Tethers’s face didn’t at all match with his voice. It’s not so much a limitation of the voice actors as it is the art style, as the art style best works with every character looking surprised at all times. The style also makes the game pretty exciting at certain action-oriented (albeit ridiculous) moments throughout the game- unfortunately, these moments are few and far between. You can tell when they happen because the music will swell and the story will be set up for suspense, but you won’t hear them very often.

The animation of the game is stylistically choppy, and while I usually wouldn’t care about graphics in a story-focused game, the choppy animation and often long pauses in action have a tendency to take you out of the story and ruin some of the more suspenseful moments of the game. The controls of the game are just as choppy and on occasions where puzzle pieces overlap, it’s hard to grab the right one, even if it’s on top.

Despite the game’s faults programming-wise, the thing that annoyed me the most about Puzzle Agent was its ending. I don’t think I’ve ever been so unsatisfied by a game’s ending in recent memory because with Puzzle Agent, no questions are answered, and instead of bringing it back full circle, you’re just kind of put back into your office from the beginning. For a while, I was even unsure that the game was over- there’s never any clear indication that the episode is done, (UPDATE: Apparently, Telltale has already fixed the lack of indication at the game’s ending, but it doesn’t change the fact that the ending isn’t that great.) and I only realized it was over when there was nothing to click on. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this ending, as it’s only the first episode of many, but so many questions were posted in the game that it’s a shame that you get absolutely no answers or continuity for any of them.

Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent boasts a very interesting story, but it’s confusing puzzles, choppy animations, low level of true interactivity, and poor ending make the series’s pilot very disappointing. For your $9.95, Telltale offers better point-and-click adventures, and there are some better puzzle games out there.

The Rundown

+ Graham Annable’s neat hand-drawn 2D style
+ Interesting story
- Choppy animations take you out of the experience
- Puzzles can be confusing and superfluous
– Poorly done ending, doesn’t come full circle
- Low level of true interactivity

Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent was developed by Telltale Games and published by Telltale Games for the PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and WiiWare. The game will be released in the United States in June of 2010 with a retail price of $9.95 USD. The copy used in this review was for the PC and supplied by Telltale Games. The game was played to completion for the purpose of this review. Specs of the PC used are as follows: Toshiba Portege M700, Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.60ghz, 4GB RAM, Windows Vista (32 Bit).

Tales of Monkey Island & Sam and Max Ep. 3 Coming to PSN This Month

Demi Adejuyigbe — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 20:22:59 +0000

Recently, Telltale Games added Sam & Max to the PlayStation Network, and by the end of this month, PSN gamers will have two more adventure games to add to their library. Telltale & LucasArts plan to release the entire first season (five episodes) of Tales of Monkey Island as a downloadable PSN game on June 15th.

If you don’t have a PS3, you’re still in luck though, as Telltale is lowering the price of the collection down to $20 on all platforms and throwing in the first episode of the new season of Sam & Max. You’ve got until the end of June to jump on this deal, so do it!

Telltale is also releasing the third episode of the third season of Sam and Max on PSN, as well as the PC and Mac, on June 22. (June 23 for our friends across the sea) Good news for everyone! I still have to catch up on Sam & Max before I play the new season, but I’m looking forward to checking it out. Anyone else going to be picking up any of these games?

Review: Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People – Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner

Wade Larson — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:34:09 +0000

Let me make this quick. If you like the quirky humor and nonsensical shenanigans of Strong Bad and Homestar Runner enough to pay $8.95 for a point-and-click episode of the web series, this game is right up your alley. Everyone else, save that money and go buy a yo-yo or a lottery ticket. It’ll keep you entertained far longer.

Bottom Line: 2

Hit the jump to see Strong Bad get a taste of his own verbal pummeling.

Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People isn’t a bad game, for one simple reason. It’s not a game. What it is, amongst other things, is an exercise in futility, a journey into the heart of boredom, and a nearly pointless waste of time. I say nearly pointless, because the ‘game’ is a point-and-click escapade, in which players direct Strong Bad around the Homestar Runner neighborhood in a quest to “pummel” the titular armless white guy. Along the way, Strong Bad encounters other characters from the web series, and can choose to converse about heady topics such as the war in Iraq, this year’s election and the state of the economy.

Of course I made that up. No, the topics of conversation are as about as insipid as they come, and the only redeeming quality of said conversations is Strong Bad’s ability to either say something nice, or “say something he would say,” essentially a third-grade level insult. Unlike any other adventure where contextual conversation impacts the way things go, clicking on all choices available yields no reward or consequence other than the lines of dialogue that follow, which might actually be considered a punishment. The ACLU was too busy with Guantanamo Bay inmates to field my calls on the matter, so in my completely unprofessional and in no way qualified opinion, I’d say… yes.

Through the course of the game, Strong Bad acquires items which come in especially useless, such as hedge trimmers which cannot be used on anything except hedges (why can’t I use them on the other characters? It might have made the game interesting) and a phone for prank calls. I never figured out the point of saving hedge clippings, though I assume because they are in my inventory they serve a purpose. One of life’s great mysteries, I guess.

Another one of life’s mysteries is what the hell the objective of the game is. I guess I’m supposed to “pummel” Homestar, but I never did get that far. I ran around doing menial tasks and clicking through repetitive dialogue trees with no sense of purpose or direction. I finally gave up after a couple of hours, and chose to organize my sock drawer instead. It seemed a logical step up for my day.

But I am giving this game a 2. Why, you ask, would I give it a 2 after it so clearly earned the highest possible score on a scale of zero to negative zero?

Because it made me laugh. I was once a fan of the website, for about a month. I played “Trogdor” repeatedly on Guitar Hero, and I was actually moderately enticed by this game. There are a few points when I chuckled despite the mental stagnation the game brought on. I never “lol’d” as they say, or even guffawed, but I did snicker and I think at one point I may have even chortled.

Still, the few points of humor are not enough to detract from the overall aura of vagueness radiated by this game. It feels like an interactive episode of the web series, and if it were offered for free might be a decent little time-waster of a flash game, but to put a price tag on this, even nine bucks, seems a farce. This should clearly be free content, as no sane person would – or should – pay for the experience.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

Telltale Games To Create Episodic Wallace and Gromit Game

Andrew Podolsky — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:28:02 +0000

Straight out of San Diego comes the latest ~~comic-book~~ animation and videogame news: Telltale Games, who have made two seasons of Sam and Max episodic games and are working on the Homestar Runner Wiiware game, have announced they’ll be creating a series of games based on Wallace and Gromit.

Wallace and Gromit are a British man-and-best-friend team that have held a number of odd jobs across their short films, including window washers, sheep shearers, and astronauts. Telltale CEO Dan Connors told the Associated Press that they’ll stay true to the short films and 2005 movie, but no word yet on whether these will be action-based or adventure-based games.

W&G is a beloved series by many, so hopefully Telltale Games will be careful to keep fans on board by carefully matching the series’ humor, wit, and art style. As soon as we have the first concrete info on this intriguing new game, we’ll be sure to let you know.

PC Review: Sam and Max Season 2 Episode 3: Night of the Raving Dead

Andrew Podolsky — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:38:58 +0000

Sam and Max visit Stuttgart’s creatures of the nightclub

Thank goodness, I was worried there for a bit. After the lackluster Moai Better Blues, which was a bit on the short side, the latest Sam and Max episode brings the comedic adventure series back to where it belongs. In Night of the Raving Dead, you’ve got some of the best music in the series so far, a great new villain, and plenty of interesting puzzles.

Let’s talk about the music first. The mash-up of styles in Night of the Raving Dead is utterly entrancing. From the jazzed-up gothic horror theme when you first arrive in rainy Stuttgart, to the tear-jerking solo violin when you encounter a heartless Frankenstein monster, the sound designers have truly outdone themselves in this episode. It’s leaps beyond the goofy “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” refrain from Moai Better Blues.

It also helps that the new characters have a lot more personality than episode 202′s stone heads and sea monkeys. Night of the Raving Dead introduces Jurgen, a pensive vampire pretty-boy who own a haunted disco called The Zombie Factory. Jurgen is a riot, with his uppity attitude and twin nipple rings (which he painfully hangs his thumbs from—yikes!). He’s also a big fan of the strange TV show Midtown Cowboys, so you can be sure you’ll revisit that set from Sam and Max Season 1.

Jurgen has unleashed zombie hordes on Sam and Max’s neighborhood, but they’re not that harmful, even if one of them does steal Jessie James’ disembodied hand from the office. The zombie subplot means that Sam and Max will really get to see how the other half “lives”, which leads to one of the finest moments of the season so far. You’ll know it when you see it.

Sam says not all vampires are fruity, just the European ones

The puzzles are much improved from Moai Better Blues as well. Some of the multi-part missions involve sapping Jurgen of his cool and hooking up Frankenstein with the soulmate-seeking Sybil (who has dumped Lincoln for his Easter Island indiscretions). These puzzles are clever and creative, but they seem to be a bit simpler than they were previous episodes. Of course, if you get stuck, the adjustable hint system is still just as subtle and helpful as always.

Although a few characters (like Bosco) are MIA this time around, and my personal favorite Stinky only makes the briefest of cameos, Night of the Living Dead might be the best episode to start with if you’re new to this season or series. The season premier, Ice Station Santa, does a better job of reintroducing the characters, but Night of the Raving Dead has a brilliantly original story and some really fun new locations to explore. For a really solid adventure game episode, crack a glowstick and download Night of the Raving Dead.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

Other Sam and Max Season 2 reviews:
- Ice Station Santa
- Moai Better Blues

[album=11]

PC Review: Sam and Max Season 2 Episode 2: Moai Better Blues

Andrew Podolsky — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:06:57 +0000

When we last left Sam and Max, they had just saved a demon-possessed Santa at the North Pole and then righted the wrongs of Christmas past, present, and future. Now, they’ve jumped through the Bermuda Triangle, where they will rock out with the giant stone heads of the Easter Island Moai and sip from the Fountain of Youth with the ever-young Amelia Earhart and Jimmy Hoffa. It’s good to be back.

To say there’s little logical connection between Episodes 1 and 2 this season would be an understatement, but then again, the series has always been as random and strange as an extended therapy session with the hyperkinetic rabbitty thing Max. The episodic Sam and Max games are still heavily tied to adventure game conventions, but if you’re comfortable enough with these characters to settle into a groove, then you’ll likely come away smiling.

Character advancement is the most satisfying aspect of the new episode. Sybil and Abraham Lincoln’s head go on a picnic in Easter Island (right next to the mast of Noah’s Ark and the life preserver from the SS Minnow), waitress and diner owner Stinky is still as tough and evasive with her customers, and Bosco is just as jumpy and paranoid.

Episode 2 introduces new characters as well, like the giant stone headed Moais, which control the elements of wind and lightening, and partake in the occasional basalt sandwich. Beneath an active volcano, which it’s Sam and Max’s job to defuse in this episode, lives a race of feet-worshipping sea monkeys. These new characters are interesting and funny, but will we ever see them again after this encounter?

The main problem with Episode 2 of this season is that it isn’t quite as accessible to newcomers. If you’re going to start playing a Sam and Max game, try Ice Station Santa, the second season premier that debuted in November. Moai Better Blues feels like a more compacted, less sprawling experience, and doesn’t have Ice Station Santa’s breathless energy. Most of the game is confined to Easter Island, with very few reasons to come back to Sam and Max’s neighborhood, and the minigames like riding a mechanical surfboard aren’t too satisfying by themselves.

The humor once again saves the day here, but Moai Better Blues is not quite as accomplished as the stellar season premier. If this season continues along at this pace, it’ll be a generally successful return to adventure game form, but I’m really hoping that Sam and Max pull out a few more surprises during the rest of their run.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

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

Andrew Podolsky — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 07:02:40 +0000

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.

E for All Interview: Dan Connors, CEO Telltale Games, Talks Sam & Max

Andrew Podolsky — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 01:57:26 +0000

Dan Connors is the CEO of Telltale Games, makers of the Sam & Max episodes

The Sam and Max episodes have proven that regular episodic gaming can work, and that there’s still room for comedic adventure games in the market. Telltale Games sells their episodic games through their website, and their games are also available on Gametap. We spoke to Telltale’s CEO Dan Connors about the Sam and Max community and what makes Sam and Max work as episodic comedy.

Q: Episode One of Sam and Max Season Two comes out in November. How far along is the rest of the series?
A: Episode Two is very close,Three we’re about to drop voice in, and Four the design is done. Five we’re about halfway through the design.

Q: Are you involved in the fan community, the people who are anticipating the next season?
A: Yeah!

Q: What are their impressions of Ice Station Santa based on what’s been released?
A: People seem to be really excited about it. We’ve definitely got people living at our site now who are anticipating the next release, which was always a big goal for us. Last season was all about “how do you release a bunch of episodes, how does one episode link to another,” now we’re in this “how do seasons relate to each other?”

What we’ve always set out to do is create an experience where there’s a Sam and Max world online that you can come back to and be part of every month. Our dream is that that continues to blur between game releases and other Sam and Max web experiences and Telltale web experiences.

Q: When you say other Sam and Max experiences, do you mean the online community?
A: Yeah, like community, and ways to connect the community to the game, and take advantage of the fact that it is an online product. There’s no limits to what you can do. Well, obviously there’s limits, but there’s so many things to try. And it’s not like right now we’re under somebody’s thumb, kind of telling us what we can and can’t do.

We’re really interested in seeing what people are interested in, and what they’re responding to, what they’re really liking about it and what they don’t, so the community shows you that kind of stuff. Which is cool, when you have a community they tell you what they like. It seems like they’re liking what they see, because really it’s just going to be more Sam and Max and even crazier, wilder situations.

Andrew explains to Dan that yellow paper is easier on the eyes

Q: How have people responded to the adventure game aspect? Have you ever thought of taking those characters and putting them in a different type of game?
A: Well, we want to evolve adventure games to something that is much easier to use for everybody. Sam and Max is a little bit of a double edged sword. It was an adventure game, there are a lot of people who want it to stay an adventure game. And those people are the ones we can count on no matter what to come back and enjoy the experience. So if you think about who the consumer for Sam and Max is going to be, the adventure game makes a lot of sense.

Now using that mechanic and taking the best things about Sam and Max– the fact that they’re outrageously funny, the characters are a riot, the situations are a riot, so running around with a gun shooting at all of them wouldn’t necessarily deliver that. But the adventure game mechanics can be evolved in a way that the world is more alive and more active.

What we’re really thinking of now is the passive nature of an adventure game. You walk into a space, and you have to make something happen. You have to click on something to happen. What we want is the world to be more proactive towards you and come at you. If you walk into a room in a first person shooter, people don’t stand around waiting for you to do something. You’d get your ass blown off, and you move.

So that’s a driven experience, and that’s really how we want to evolve Telltale Games in general. Now, dramatically doing that to the Sam and Max audience that we have, love, and allow us to be funny and creative and come up with great characters, it’s a very sensitive thing. It’s not something we’re going to just drop on them.

Q: So would you be open to a spin-off series that is more action-oriented, or in a different genre?
A: No matter what genre we do, it’s still going to be about the characters and the story. If we do something like The Flint Paper Capers, I see it being closer to a CSI type of experience than a Max Payne type experience.

One of our mottos early was, in a Telltale game, if you’re going to shoot someone, you’re going to have a good reason. So vision-wise, the company’s vision is still to get to that point where there’s real connection between the player and the AI characters in the world. The Sims and Railroad Tycoon are both types of games we look at for inspiration. Even Façade and the more experimental stuff.

Q: Why did you choose to put Episode 4 for free on Gametap?
A: Because we think it’s a great episode. It’s topical. It’s going to be on our site in a couple of weeks too, as kind of a hey, here comes the new season, check out the best of last season. So we’re going to make it available to as many people as possible, and we know free is a great enticer. Right now, from a market standpoint, the first episode sells the most by far. People come in and they start on the first episode. Shouldn’t shock us or anything.

Q: But you don’t consider that to be the very best?
A: I don’t think anybody in the studio considers that to be the very best. It’s funny because it’s the best reviewed, and it won adventure game of the year, but that was just because it didn’t suck. I think more people can relate to [episode 4], swing on by and check it out, get introduced to Telltale Games, and say hey, this is pretty cool.

Q: Will making episode 4 available encourage people to review the rest of the series, or do you want to push them forward into season 2?
A: Our hope is it’s going to be something that gets people interested to go buy season 2. By four we hit our stride, and we weren’t stressed out about finishing it and wrapping it up. It was just sort of the perfect set of circumstances.

Q: Any plans to go back and refine the first season?
A: I think the first season is going to stay as it is, and if people want to start from the beginning, that’s great. We’re still incredibly proud of it. And it’s going to be part of the evolution of the series no matter what. Like you watch the first season of the Sopranos, and they weren’t exactly in their stride, but you look back at it later.

Dan is proud of the first season and its part in the evolution of the series

We took everything we learned from the first one and put it in from the ground up into Season 2. From the arc of the story, as far as type of puzzles people liked and didn’t like, as far as what the frustrations were for people. Everything we learned in Season one, we’re starting Season two with.

And then it was funny watching the production team kind of get their groove again, in the design and everything else, and watch the story flesh out. I think by three or four again this season it’s going to be kind of the best stuff. One is also outrageouslly funny, especially since it’s a Christmas spec ial. Having the ability to do that is something we’ve always wanted to do with episodic games.

Q: Where would you like to see the characters end up eventually? Are Sybil Pandemik and Abe Lincoln’s Giant Stone Head going to have little half giant headed babies?
A: You know, the sky’s the limit. You can see what the beauty of Sam and Max is. It’s like, you set up some ridiculous situation and ridiculous ideas come out of it. If there were six little Lincoln baby heads and they had a biting problem, and they were biting Max in the ankles, whatever… anything can happen. And that’s the beauty.

Q: What can you tell us about the new character, the waitress at Stinky’s diner?
A: Her grandfather originally owned it… and there’s definitely something fishy going on there. You still have a lot to find out about it, because the designers always kill me for giving away their secrets.

The waitress at Stinky’s is the granddaughter of the original owner,
and her story will be explained in Season Two.

Q: What are you doing to evolve the technology of the adventure game?
A: We’re doing a lot. We’re really focusing on understanding where the player is in the world. The engine is checking in with the player, saying have you done this before, how many times have you clicked on this. With that feedback, we then can tell the characters how to respond to that player. So it comes back to that bringing the player back to the world alive.

If I’m standing in the store not looking at anything, Bosco will say “What’s wrong with you?” and he should really recognize it. Understanding the player’s intent can be tricky because you never know when they’re going to go out back and have a smoke or whatever, but there are certainly things you can pull from it. Help direct the player, but don’t direct them when they don’t want to be directed.

If someone just wants to play a game that’s not just running around shooting, they want to get introduced to Sam and Max, they want to laugh their ass off, they don’t want to get frustrated. So we need to give them a directed experience. Immediately their first instinct is to not want to solve a problem. So we’ve got to recognize that and immediately make them feel like they are solving problems but they’re being helped enough. All those nuances.

So you’ve got the game telling you you’ve done this, that, and the other thing. We’re incubating that right now. And a lot of the other stuff is about the production proccess. Five episodes in six months is not easy. And we got better at doing it in the last one. By the end we were good at doing it and of course the designers made things three times more complicated. So it still took just as long. So they pushed, we optimized, they push, we optimized.

You’ll see our characters will be acting better this year, added animations, better use of animations. Just everyone has more animations to choose from and we’re selecting them better, and there’s better blending between them. Holistically, everything’s less rough. It’s going to be a good season.