Sam & Max Save the World Remastered

Took me a while to finally play it but Sam & Max Save The World is the gold standard of comedic storytelling. With engaging gameplay, wacky puzzle design, and highly memorable characters. This game itches my brain in all the right spots, delivering a mostly joyful experience. Apart from some frustrations with certain puzzles, the adventures of Sam & Max are something no gamer should miss.

Laugh-out-loud funny, with easily-digestible absurdist puzzles that remain somehow easy to understand, it’s a classic (if a little repetitive). [Issue#20, p.78]

A great opportunity to revisit a Telltale classic, before their days of ambiguous moral choices and ceaseless licensed titles. The Freelance Police have never looked better, with Sam and Max Save the World being a brilliant foray into the world of point ‘n’ click adventuring with joke a minute humour, tenuously logical puzzles and fantastic presentation.

Sam & Max make a largely triumphant return, with a reminder of just how special and stupid a series it can be. Save the World benefits the most from the overhaul, but Beyond Time and Space remains the peak of this former Telltale Games series.

It would have been nice if there were some special features, artwork from Steve Purcell or some of the original comics, but as the saying goes, you should never look a gift horse in the mouth, because this effervescent and evergreen title is an ageless wine with a comically-large gun, and one can only hope that this leads to not only the remastering of the entire trilogy of games on consoles, but also something new. Sam and Max are back, baby.

Point-and-click narratives are fairly rare nowadays and this remaster gets more than the job done, offering a good time for old and new fans. Better yet, it brings back an old forgotten style, reminding us that, sometimes, perhaps the most simple way to tell a story might be the best way.