Sam and Max Freelance Police Preview

Lucasarts’ point and click adventure games on the PC have somewhat of a legendary status; Manic Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, The Dig, Indy Jones, all classic games based around various forms of the Script Creation Utility for Manic Mansion system. Sam and Max Hit the Road was also one of these great looking, great sounding, great playing games, and it was funny to boot.

Sam – the dog – and Max – the rabbit – are freelance cops with a penchant for extreme violence as they go about their task of protecting the world from erm, bad things… The duo started life as a comic book and had the one game as well as some cartoons. People really liked the game, and now, finally, another one is on the way, as with Full Throttle. It is nice to see sequels done properly; when people actually want them, and done with care and attention they can be really good.<br><br>Back to the dog and rabbit, from what we’ve been told the game has been apparently cobbled together from bits of various game engines at Lucasarts. So long as the technology fits the game well, that allows the focus of the game to be – as it should always be - gameplay, script and the stuff that goes to make these two bits fit together, puzzles I think they’re called.

This time the graphics are fully three dimensional as you might expect, however the graphical style manages to really capture the feeling of a cartoon, which is good for something based on cartoon characters. The first game was packed full of mini-games, puzzles and mad characters. Although we don’t know too much about this outing for the dangerous duo, it seems safe to assume that there will be more of the same, but different, and just as good, but probably better.

Lucasarts are being understandably cagey about the details of the bestial detective duo’s adventure. Given that jokes work best first time around it makes sense to keep things under-wraps. We are promised that things will be bigger and better than the first game, about five times as big - but that could just be random developer talk. Things that were boring to do in the first one will be cut out, although it is hard to remember what was boring about the first one, even the copy protection was funny.

In amongst the artwork for the game is a picture of a space station. Far be it from us to engage in idle speculation… Ah sod it, let’s do some... One could infer from the inclusion of such an object that the diabolical duo will be shot into space. Why, how and for how long they will be in space, we have no idea, but it should be an interesting part of the adventure that’s for sure. Perhaps it has something to do with the evil that lurks around every corner, not just of earth, but of the universe… Perhaps Sam and Max will go where no animals have gone before – apart from space monkeys - and enlighten us as to why we are here and where we are going.

Probably not, thinking about it for more than a second.

Violence and messing around in zero gravity are more likely to be the order of the day here.

We feel rather confident that this Sam and Max game will be rather good. The pedigree of the first game is very high and the screenshots look just how you would hope them to look. Nicely detailed, full of character and well animated, you can’t really ask for more in a game like this. Let them spend the time writing and designing things, as it should be for this type of thing.

Fans of the first game will already be doing unspeakable things at the mere thought of having another interactive adventure with a couple of talking sarcastic animals. For those of you not convinced by the lack of information on the plot, lack of bleeding edge technology and rather traditional gameplay method, don’t worry, we assure you this game will at the very least amuse you, and probably will make you laugh and feel all sorts of emotions, probably rage and frustration on the whole…