Sam & Max: Season 2: Episode One: Ice Station Santa Preview

E for All 2007 Preview

Last year’s Sam & Max Season One was a prime example of how to properly do episodic content in a PC environment. The game lived up to its namesake by releasing like a season of a television show with six distinct episodes playing out like sections of one full game. Now that Season One is in the bag, Telltale Games are ready to begin a new season of Sam & Max, Season Two. The season premiere, Ice Station Santa, was on hand at Telltale’s booth at LA’s E for All event and GameZone got a chance to sit down and see what this year has in store for adventure game fans.

Sam & Max: Ice Station Santa begins with the crime-fighting duo arriving at the North Pole to investigate claims that Santa Claus has gone crazy and began shipping out dangerous toys to children. They arrive and find the elves in disarray as Santa Claus has gone off the deep end, shooting at Sam and Max right when they arrive to talk some sense into them. So, without giving anything away, it’s up to the two to figure out just what is happening and restore some order to the North Pole.

The game retains the same brand of quirky puzzles as last year’s Season, and makes a few interesting tweaks. The camera has been improved a bit and feels like a free-form model, following your characters more a cinematic cam in a third-person action game than a fixed perspective that most adventure gamers are used to. Additionally, the character models look great and the whole adventure runs very smoothly.

The main draw of the Sam & Max series has always been the humor. Ice Station Santa doesn’t lose what made the original game (or last season, for that matter) so great, and is still witty, acerbic and well written.

If the brief time we spent with it is any indication, Season Two is set to be a strong and compelling reason to hop back into the crazy adventures for another full season. Look for it to land on November 8^th.