Sam and Max episode 3

[miffy495]

Downloading it now. Day early release for pre-orders I guess. I'll be playing it tonight when I get back from my evening class. Figured I'd start up a thread now as we'll probably be discussing it shortly. If you have a pre-order, check your inbox! It could be waiting for you as you read this!

[brkl]

I guess I should play the second one.

[toblix]

Worst. Thread. Title. Evar.

[Duncan]

I was genuinely surprised and thrilled that for the first time ever, a) an email from Telltale went to my inbox and not my spam folder, and the game actually downloaded the way it was supposed to and I didn't have to deal with the client crapping out and activation codes.

The sad part is I'm pretty sure that was the best thing that happened to me all week.

[miffy495]

Worst. Thread. Title. Evar.

Well, I can't make a "more like" until after I've played the game, now can I? I'll come up with something later tonight, after I've finished it, then post it here if it makes you happy. We can't all be as brilliant as you...

[Moosferatu]

While it was definitely the shortest so far, I think I enjoyed this one the most.

[miffy495]

Sam & Max: The Mole, The Mob, and The Meatball? More like Retraced Tracks: The Hole, The Gob, and The Short Haul! Sorry, that name is hard. I tried for a shot at the re-used puzzles, the length of the game, and a bummed in the gob reference all at once. Not entirely satisfied with it, but it'll do. Anyway, on to the game:

Very, very enjoyable. The release of each new Sam & Max is quickly becoming the most looked-forward-to part of my month. This one continues the awesome, although I do have a couple of gripes. Primarily,

another puzzle where you need the ketchup dispenser? C'mon, let's add some variety in there. Being ordered to whack Sybil was such a great idea and really impressed me, but faking her death using a rehashed puzzle? Telltale can do better, I just know it. May I remind you that even when old LucasArts adventures reused puzzles, it wasn't until the last chapter of the game. I honestly did expect a "hey, isn't this situation kinda familiar?" puzzle/boss confrontation in Episode 6. This is Episode 3 though, don't tell me they're running out of ideas halfway through...

That, aside from the fact that I beat it in less than 2.5 hours, (taking my time) is my only real complaint. Still, as the quality is this high, I don't really mind the length. It'd be nice if the next one were closer to 4 hours, but this'll do so long as the story and dialogue keep up where they are.

Oh, and the ending? Fucking hilarious.

Max's death scene had me laughing my ass off, and when Ted E took his mask off, I actually made a whoop of joy and yelled "DOUG!" Unfortunately, not Doug, but now I'm looking forward to perhaps some more moleman in later episodes. Doubt it'll be Ted, though. That was quite the blast.

[manny_c44]

This one was a bit short/easy, but really the only real complaint is a lack of new environments---that last factory scene was well designed and animated, I just wish there was more like it.

If they really only have 3 or 4 weeks to create new content it's pretty surprising they can get a good episode out at all. I wonder how much of the content creation happened at the start of the endeavour, before the episodes were even released, as compared to the work that goes on in between episodes.

It's nice to see telltale, as basically the only real producer in the episodic format, succeed.

...although this episode is generally being panned by critics. I really liked it however, and look forward to it every month.

[Marek]

really the only real complaint is a lack of new environments---that last factory scene was well designed and animated, I just wish there was more like it.

Stay tuned . . . . . .

[toblix]

While it was definitely the shortest so far, I think I enjoyed this one the most.

What, the game or the thread title?

[Tanukitsune]

He he, I beat the game before I even got the email telling me it was available!

Sybil has run out of room on her sign outside, I wonder what she'll do in the next game?

[vimes]

I've completed the demo which is fine but not 'extraordinaire' as Jean François Sissypants would say.Mr " Wanna Play Cars is hilarious though".

I shall activate the thing tonight.

The only thing bothering me right now is the huge drop in framerates that I witnessed in some of the camera configuration at the casino and Sam& Max' office street. I've got a centrino 1.73Ghz, an X700, 1go of Ram and, in 1024*768, I can't believe how slow it can get. This is really getting on my nerves.

[manny_c44]

The only thing bothering me right now is the huge drop in framerates that I witnessed in some of the camera configuration at the casino and Sam& Max' office street. I've got a centrino 1.73Ghz, an X700, 1go of Ram and, in 1024*768, I can't believe how slow it can get. This is really getting on my nerves.

This is a problem for me too, and I've got 2.1Ghz core2duo, X1900GT, 2g ram so I believe it's just a weird fluke in this episode. I didn't happen before. Specifically on the street in front of Sam and Max's office whenever the train passes behind the buildings (the train isn't visible but you hear the sound effect) the frame rate bogs down heavily.

[Jayel]

I noticed a huge drop in framerates too. It only happens after a period of playing (say, 10 minutes). Every time it happens, I had to quit and reload. Annoying...

I noticed a similar behaviour with Telltale's Texas Hold'em demo. It would progressively get slower and slower and kept taking more and more memory (according to Windows' task manager) until the system ran out of physical memory and then it would crash. I don't know if that was ever fixed, or if it's at all related to the framerate issues with episode 3.

[miffy495]

The only thing bothering me right now is the huge drop in framerates that I witnessed in some of the camera configuration at the casino and Sam& Max' office street. I've got a centrino 1.73Ghz, an X700, 1go of Ram and, in 1024*768, I can't believe how slow it can get. This is really getting on my nerves.

Hmmm... I didn't bother to mention it, but I got the same thing too. 2.4 Ghz AMD processor, 7800GTX video card, 3 GB of RAM and I get slowed up by Sam & Max? Only in the Casino though, hopefully as that setting isn't going to be reused, it won't be a problem in the future.

[Mel]

Others have been experiencing something similar (although this talks about memory leaks, others have experienced decreased frame rates without memory leaks it seems).

http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2050

They haven't found out the exact problem but they're looking into it. Stay tuned to that thread I guess.

[JimmyTheFish]

Ditto on the performance. Though this was likely the shortest and the easiest, it was my favorite, story wise, and the funniest yet.

[vimes]

I've finished the third episode on Saturday - playing in a row Situation : Comedy and The Mole, The Mob and the Meatball - but I couldn't really bring myself to write anything about it earlier because, despite being rather enjoyable, the game ends up being a great disappointment compared to the first two episodes.

You know, Telltale is going to pull off a major thing when the team releases the 6th episode in a few months : they are going to be THE studio to release the first true episodic game. So, in a way, these guys are pioneers, and because they are, it was kinda expected that they were going to make mistakes. Not deadly mistakes but ones that would serve the format and the genre on the long run. It is what I kept reminding myself while playing the first episode, trying to be prepared to see room for improvement and tweaking. The thing is that Culture Shock turned out to be great and Situation : Comedy even surpassed it in every way and that, for a while, really convinced me that Telltale was going to pull it off without making a single mistake.

Episode 3 kinda broke this idea.

The disappointment doesn't lie in this episode relatively short length - quality doesn't come from quantity, yadayada - or its unsurprising plot. The issue here is that I feel that Telltale is making mistake they managed to avoid making in the first two episodes with great intelligence ... and I can't see why, they failed on this one.

Take the balance between old stuff and new stuff, for instance. This was my main concern before the second episode was released : was it going to look cheap, were the constraints on budget and time really going to show ? Situation : Comedy blew these doubts away : they did use what was already existing but they always put a smart,not-lazy-for-a-penny twist that made these assets look as if they'd been expanded for the new episode.

In The Mole, The Mob and The Meatball, all well known locations and characters are back but, unfortunately, they are presented the same way than before : same camera angle, same tone, same time of the day... changing the settings or providing alternate camera angle and camera tracks for the office and the street wouldn't have hurt. It was already the case in episode 2, but with the third installment, it's already growing old, which is q bad news as we're only mid-season.

It's like seeing the same establishing shot on the spaceship in Battlestar Galactica over and over again.

The recurring characters fall in the same trend : Bosco's paranoia, disguise and behind-the-counter supply were surprising thus funny in Situation : Comedy. Meanwhile, Sybil was great too : she had changed of job and her personality grew a bit thanks to that. In the third episode, Bosco and Sybil witness changes that follow the same pattern, and its isn't as compelling as before : more than anything else it makes them look as if they have been functiunalized. From the starting point, it feels like a recipe as been applied : you know that Bosco's obsession will be revealed to be true, you know that you will need him to give his behind-the-counter supply and you know that, Sybil's new job is going to be the key to a puzzle. Doing that, the designers and writers fall to a what I thought was a most renown weakness of episodic comedy : giving all recurring characters the same mechanisms of comedy twist and personality development. Of course, you can write one character to have the same routine over and over again, this is the base recurring humor; but it feels a bit cheap when both of the recurring characters are written this way.

And the new stuff ? There are few new locations, with less charm than the ones in Situation: Comedy, but with several environment animation that should compensate the loss. I say should because most of the camera angles don't put these location in a great light : most of the animations are out of frame and the camera makes amm location look empty. You'd never find a Casino as empty as the one from the toy mafia. The new characters ? Most of them are given the same model - I know it's an important point of the plot, but it wouldn't have hurt to give each mafioso a particular identity by giving it a distinctive animation.

This kind of mistakes brings back the problem of the underlying skeleton of the adventure genre restraining storytelling and character development : once this bits of dialog feels like it's been written only to give the player clues or once a character seems written so that he offers skills that will solve the player's problem, you know there's something wrong. Well, pretty much everything in Episode 03 feels this way : you won't find a lot of assets that don't answer to some needs in terms of puzzle solving.

I find it weird because Telltale really showed the skills to ignore this deviation of the genre for the better : to this point, the characters in Sam & Max were fleshed out more than what was needed to solve the puzzle. The set-up of the story and the puzzles were designed so that the player was driven by curiosity and enjoyment for the task primarly, understanding only later how it fit into a bigger plan. Failure was always something you were going through willingly, knowing it would always be fun and would always construct the characters and the story a little more.

All of that is mysteriously lacking in the last episode : you go from one puzzle to another never managing to shake out the impression that you're solving puzzles and not playing the roles of Sam & Max. For the first time in the serie, you're reminded that you're in a game. This finds its pick in the final : a non-charismatic villain, mundane actions, no interesting failure ... it's really anti-climatic.

I thought over this a long time because I can't imagine how they could end up like, knowing that, Jake, who nailed the issues mentioned above in a fantastic thread on AdventureGamers, worked on this episode.

Is a game a pain in the ass while playing ? No, god, no : the tremendous writing and some shining yet marginal ideas ('Yo mamma's jokes' sequence, for instance) make playing the game an enjoyable experience, but not as surprising or as fulfilling as Situation Comedy was. I'd like to think that this is due to this being an episode of transition : the über-plot is changing in scope - from local conspiracy to a conspiracy involving national agents - but so was Situation : Comedy (from neighborhood to local) and it didn't prevent it from being a brilliant game. Overall, The Mole, The Mob and The Meatball is a bit infuriating in that it makes mistakes regarding trivial stuff, not while trying risky game designs.

Here, I'm done.

[pilbeam]

I really enjoyed this episode. It didn't bother me that there weren't tons of new environments because I keep reminding myself that this is only a portion of the game. And in every adventure game you send up retracing your steps. When the whole things is released, there will be a huge total of locations. So what if there wasn't in one episode?

I felt like Max was finally put to some great use in this episode. In the other two, he felt like he was just tagging along, not really offering much help or even that much humor. But this time, his jokes were spot on and I loved getting to involve him more in dialogue and puzzles.

It felt like the whole thing is really hitting its stride and the plot is starting to thicken.

And the McGruff reference was hilarious.

[Jake]

Though I'm a bit late in posting this, I might as well point out that the shitty slowdowns people have been experiencing in episodes 2 and 3 have been ifxed in 4 and will be rolled back into 2 and 3 in the near future. There was a memory leak to the max found the wrapping/copy protection software Telltale uses... and uh it really sucked. But it's fixed now so non horrible versions are coming soon.

[miffy495]

Hell, it's not that horrible. Didn't stop me from beating it in one sitting. If I have to quit out of the game due to the bug, then you'll hear me bitching. Until then, fuck it. Nothing's interrupting my Sam and Max...