Sam and Max: The Penal Zone Review
Nobody is more happy that Sam and Max are back than I am. While I was happy with what TellTale did with Monkey Island, they’ve really poured a lot of creative effort into relaunching the Sam and Max IP, and the first two seasons were among the best adventure games that have been released in the past decade.
“The Penal Zone” features the tight writing and interesting puzzles that the series is known for, even starting from the new puzzle mechanic introduced with Max’s new psychic powers. He has a total four in all, but except for the introduction (which occurs at the end of the game) and the actual ending you’ll only get to use two of them. Teleportation, which is an interesting way to get around some new puzzles, and predicting the future, which allows for some cute sight gags and fills in nicely as a hint system.
The story circulates around an alien ape named Skun’ka’pe, who sounds like a James Earl Jones impersonator, who comes to steal a bunch of magical toys that will help him take over the universe. It’s not a very interesting story, to be honest, but every time they get away from it things drag, because the NPCs in charge of the secondary plotlines are Stinky and Bosco’s mom, who don’t really provide much umph. They have a handful of good lines between them, but it kind of drags.
Extra Features:
No special features to speak of as of yet.
Technical:
The review copy had a list of known bugs attached to it, mostly minor graphical glitches that have already been corrected for the retail version.
Graphics:
The graphics engine seems to have gotten a slight overhaul. They models look more like the tweaked claymation models from Wallace and Grommit mixed in with the cartoony Sam and Max/Monkey Island models. Most of the character models look excellent as usual, but the newer characters like Skun’ka’pe and the “Twilight Zone” narrator look strange and sort of out of place.
The sets are good overall, with a lot of polish. There are a few new locations, but the most impressive is really the space ship, which has a much better feel than the time travelling ship from last year, and does a great job of mimicking the old era Sci-Fi space sets.
Sound:
Dialog-wise everything is perfectly comfortable. The characters slip in right where they were last year, from Sam and Max to Stinky and Girl Stinky and Superball, the dialog is almost all well written and extremely well performed. Skun’ka’pe’s throaty growls are a pleasure to listen to.
The music is all very wekll done, though I must say that I miss the revolving jaunty music on the jukebox at Stinky’s. Which is actually a plot point that’s brought up, but environmentally I kind of miss the old music a bit.
Replay Value:
No real reason to go back through unless you think you missed a joke or two in your first playthrough.
Final Score: 7/10
As a start to the new season, I think it’s a good launching point. It’s certainly not the best episode they’ve ever done. The plot isn’t particularly inspiring, just a good place to put a few funny jokes. I will say that they did a much better job with Sam and Max about making the episode feel like an episode of a TV show as opposed to just a chunk of a larger game like Monkey Island felt like.
The one big ding that I have to make on the show, however, is that the control scheme from the X-Box/Playstation/Wii gamepads is really beginning to strain the PC. The controls are terrible on PC, especially considering the mouse is RIGHT THERE. The menus navigate really poorly, and character control with the arrow keys is awkward at best. They really need to figure out how to solve this.
If you’re interested in taking a look at the game, you can download a copy of the PC Demo at the TellTale Website.