Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space (PC) Review with stream

Sam & Max is a long existing franchise, starting life in comics and then transitioning into video games and an extremely short lived TV show.  The video game side of things would take an almost 15 year break until it was revived by Telltale games, which would make three extremely impressive titles.  Fast forward well over a decade later and those titles are now being re-released with modern graphics.  The question always remains, did this remake do the original justice.

The first remaster of the game saw several jokes changed, along with voice casting differences. This go ’round has changed, what appears to be, almost nothing with content–although the changes to the voice cast should be noted.  This isn’t nearly as bad as it was the first time, as anyone who played the first game would notice how much worse Bosco was.  This time the actor appears to have given a better performance overall, but I still miss the original.

Graphically the game is upscaled well.  Playing it on a 4k monitor looks just as you would expect, and while it might seem to be an easy enough job to increase the base resolution of a game it is important to note that Grand Theft Auto seems to have managed to not to be able to do the same task without breaking the entire game.  So point for it feeling pretty much the same.

I have loved the humor of the series since it first came out, and while the Telltale games were never the best of the series – the comics and game from LucasArts in the 90s are – they seemed to know the franchise well enough to always deliver fun and enjoyable titles.  The humor seeps from every interaction, the option to use either the insane bunny companion (Max) or simply using your gun as a tool at any point is always enjoyable– and there is so much fun to be had in simply offering the wrong solution to things just to hear the dialog.

Sam & Max is a must buy for anyone that truly enjoys the point and click genre.  There aren’t many studios out there that put these out, and even less that take time to make sure that they are done right.  For people who have played through the original, there might not be a ton to see here, and nothing truly new.  But there is honestly nothing like seeing old friends again.  Do yourself a service and pick the title up.