Few franchises call up the affection and devotion as early LucasArts adventure titles do. Utter the words "Monkey Island" or "Day of the Tentacle" to a batch of elder gamers and you can practically see the wistful tears well up in their eyes. Another much beloved line, the Sam & Max series, never quite got the love that Monkey Island did, and when LucasArts killed a modernized version of the game, fans howled in outrage, and though LucasArts turned a deaf ear, GameTap listened, and listened good. As a result, the gaming service is relaunching the Sam & Max series via episodic content, delivered monthly, one chapter at a time. Sam & Max fans will naturally pee their pants with excitement, but it's questionable whether anyone else should really care all that much about Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock.

A rabbit and a dog walk into a police department…
Sam is a dog with a large vocabulary and excellent taste in hats. Max is a rabbit who prefers to go au naturel and is as superbly cheery as he is insanely violent. They pay the rent (theoretically, anyway) by offering their services as freelance police, and in Chapter 1, they discover a nefarious character is hypnotizing the masses via a self-help videotape. To help them sniff out the clues and get to the bottom of the caper, players will follow the classic adventure formula of clicking around an environment, collecting useful items, and solving puzzles. If you've played a previous Sam & Max game, you'll be pleased to know that the trademark humor is well in place, where simply listening to descriptions of in-room items is sure to provide a steady supply of chuckles. The title characters themselves are well written and superbly acted, with excellent comedic timing and dry delivery. Yes, Chapter 1 is, quite easily, one of the funniest, sassiest, and most clever adventure games you're ever likely to play.

Click. Click. Click.
The problem with Chapter 1 is exactly what fans of Sam & Max will love about it: it stays true to the franchises' history. Perhaps a little too true. When the first game of the series, Sam & Max Hit the Road came out in 1993, adventure games were still a viable genre, and the cartoony 2-d graphics were perfectly acceptable. Thirteen years later, pointing and clicking just isn't as much fun as it used to be, and the visuals, though charming, aren't quite as adorable as they once were. The puzzles in Chapter 1 are clever and creative, but they can't disguise the fact that all you're doing is walking around a relatively small environment, picking up everything that isn't nailed down, and figuring out which item in your pocket should be used to solve the challenge at hand. The writing is whip smart, gives plenty of nods to the franchise's lineage, and delivers multiple chuckles, but pruning dialogue trees gets tedious after a while.

Tune in next time
Releasing Sam & Max in an episodic way is either brilliant or ungodly stupid, I'm honestly not sure which. On the one hand, parceling out the gaming nuggets in monthly one-hour bites is a good way to make sure that players don't get sick of it. On the other, making players wait so long in between installments may cause them to lose interest. Either way, Sam & Max Chapter 1: Culture Shock is a well-done example of the adventure genre, with genuinely funny characters, well-crafted puzzles, and jump-right-in style gameplay. If you're an adventure game fan, you're sure to enjoy it, but even if you're not, the duo's sharp humor and smart silliness might just make you into one.

- Maj1013