The opening scene of Sam & Max 203: Night of the Raving Dead finds the titular heroes trapped in a soul-sucking machine by the Vampire Lord Jurgen of Stuttgart. You spend the rest of the game entangling the Freelance Police Force in this mess.

If you’re a fan of Sam & Max – through the website, the comics, or the previous episodes of the game – you’ll no doubt love Night of the Raving Dead. All of your favorite over-the-top characters – like the C.O.P.S., Sybil, Mr. Featherly (he has legally changed his name from Philo Pennyworth), Jimmy the Rat, and Abraham Lincoln – are back to play their part as Sam and Max are off to investigate a recent zombie invasion.

Love at First Bite?

Eventually the sleuthing duo are led to a castle in Stuttgart known as The Zombie Factory, an all-hours zombie-raver night club that is also the home of a flamboyant vampire known as Jurgen. Always topless to show off his nipple rings, Jurgen claims his source of power is his style – his utterly self-pitying, emo-raver style that makes 30 Seconds to Mars look tame. He loves poetry, and considers himself a morbid master even though he’s a rhyme-stealing hack. Your job, naturally, is to put a stop to Jurgen’s nefarious plot to take over the world with his zombie army.

If you’re not a fan of Sam & Max, even if you’ve never heard of them, you will still have a lot of fun playing this game. Something like an interactive cartoon for adults, Sam & Max Episode 203: Night of the Raving Dead is the latest episode in a long-running storyline. There are a lot of references to things from past episodes that will seem like utter nonsense to newbie’s at first – for instance, Max, a “rabbity thing,” is also a tribal high priest and the President of the U.S., and there is a guy named Leonard tied and gagged on the top shelf of Sam & Max’s office closet – and this can be a little off-putting at first.

Sam & Max 101

But Sam & Max 203: Night of the Raving Dead’s sense of humor makes it instantly enjoyable, and the simple controls make it easy to get into. Gameplay consists of exploring Sam & Max’s world and interacting with the people and objects you find there. You play as Sam, a canine detective, and you only need to use the mouse to tell Sam where to walk, select dialogue options, or click on items in the world to inspect or interact with them.

The storyline is conveyed to you through animated scenes as well as dialogue with the other characters in the game. You often have to solve puzzles to advance the storyline, and this is the only other conceivable sticking point for people new to Sam & Max. If you’re not familiar with how the games work, even the hints you can have Max give you periodically, which seem to range from obvious to fairly cryptic, might not help you much.

The game’s bizarre, absurdist humor is well-written, and ultimately that’s what really sells this game. Well, that and the chance to drive Sam and Max’s DeSoto around firing promotional CD’s (the C.O.P.S. have started a zombie internet service) at the invading horde of undead plaguing the streets.