Skunkape returns with a remaster of the old Telltale Sam & Max Season 2 (Beyond Time And Space) episodic adventure that was first released about a dozen years ago. In fact, my great friend and colleague, Nathan, reviewed that original release way back in 2009. His original review still carries a lot of great detail and information that holds true for this remaster that was just released eight days ago. You may be interested to know that Sam & Max: Season One, aka Sam & Max: Save the World, had a remaster released last year which I reviewed and really enjoyed. Skunkape are also working on the remaster of Season 3, which if the trend holds, should release in about a year from now.
So why revive an old point and click adventure? Well, for one, good point and click adventure games stand the test of time as good or better than any other gaming genre. These types of games tend to be strong on memorable stories and characters, while having gameplay elements that do not require twitch reflexes or raw skill or luck to succeed at. You can play these at a comfortable pace and you can’t really fail unless you give up or just hit a brick wall on a puzzle. Sam & Max games do have some action-y mini games within them, such as where you have to drive the Desoto (their car) or shoot things, but these games are not difficult, and, you can even select to bypass them in the remaster. Additionally, when it comes to solving obtuse puzzles — and admittedly the Sam & Max games do have some challenging, not-so-logical puzzles — you have not only old online walkthroughs that still work with this remaster, but, even better, an in-game hint system will help you out. The hint system is well done in that it has five stages of frequency. You can have hints drop extremely rarely or all the time, with several points in between. I also appreciated the ability to highlight the “hotspots” in every scene. The hotspots are those objects in the world that Sam & Max can interact with. When you press the ‘T’ button, all of these objects get a small yellow dot placed on them so you can be sure you have scanned the entire scene with ease, which keeps you from the dreaded pixel-hunting that point-and-click games have some infamy for.
As with the remastered release of Save the World, Skunkape have gone above and beyond with the remaster for Beyond Time And Space. Of course, you have stark visual upgrades that really modernize the game and give it not only a technical make-over, but also character models were updated to achieve series creator Will Purcell’s vision. Camera angles were also adjusted and modernized for better presentation of scenes. English audio tracks were redone in as far as the original recordings were brought back and not down-sampled in this release (as they apparently were in the original release to save size and bandwidth). Eight new songs were also freshly recorded for Beyond Time And Space so as to give the player more variety in the background music which would otherwise have been identical to the music from Save the World. And trust me, as you may already know, when you’re stuck hard and not ready to look at a hint yet, the music is one of the first things that can get grating, so having some fresh tracks is a plus. Skunkape even trickled in a few Easter eggs to find.
Rather than rattle off other changes, I’ll point you to one of their posts on Steam that provides great detail, with media, to these and other changes they have made in this very comprehensive remaster. Oh, and for those that want to keep the original release, or just want the original release for the first time, the remaster is a separate Steam Library entry so it won’t replace your original. Additionally, if you don’t already have the original Beyond Time And Space, you get that as part of purchasing this remaster, just in case you ever get the free time to check it out versus this clearly superior remastered version. One small catch this time around though is that previous owners of Beyond Time And Space do not get a discount when they go to purchase the remaster, due to how Steam has changed policy on this type of transaction.
It’s evident that Skunkape has done an excellent job with the remaster, but you may be wondering about the actual game. In a word, it’s great, but, I couldn’t help but feel that sometimes the circumstances within the plots are so zany it’s almost stressful. I realize that’s kind of a strange statement, but as I played through these episodes the wild nature of the characters, dialog, and circumstances that Sam and Max find themselves in is just really kooky, but, creative. I’m also still not sure what I think of Max (the rabbit) — on the one hand he’s witty, but he’s also really obnoxious at times and his humor can fall really flat, which makes his interjections to conversations with NPCs a bit eyeroll-inducing. On the other hand, I like the character of Sam a lot more; he’s often the sanest character of the lot. That said, I have to give credit to the creative minds behind the episodes of the games as the puzzles, plots, and characters will keep you on your toes and you just never know what you’re going to get from moment to moment. The puzzles, though frustratingly obtuse sometimes, are kept in check with the hotspot marker and in-game hint system mentioned earlier, which helps keep the enjoyment flowing and you can avoid being stuck for long if you choose to.
In sum, Skunkape has done another excellent job remastering an old point-and-click gem from the Telltale archives of years past. Though I wouldn’t put the Sam & Max episodic adventures in my all time list for the genre, they do rank highly, and are absolutely worth playing if you enjoy the genre or want to experience some zany plots and characters. We’ll look forward to the third and final remaster hopefully next year.
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