Sam & Max Hit the Road

I'm a total adventure game buff who can't get enough of these 90s games. So I was excited to finally get to knock off my list the illustrious "Sam and Max", famous for being a genre-defining game. I... was significantly disappointed. The game itself probably took me a month to finish because it was so dull, I rarely had the drive to pick it back up and make some more progress. There's virtually no story here-- You start with "Find the Bigfoot," and then you do a bunch of mindless tasks, until you find the Bigfoot. The entire appeal of the game is supposed to be around its humor, but it was severely lacking. This game's definition of humor is, "A bunch of jerks being jerks." Almost every single character in this game was a bad person, making them unrelatable and cringeworthy. Puzzles definitely skewed more towards the "Moon Logic" end of the spectrum. My favorite was when Sam identified an object as, "That is a completely useless object." that was actually critical to the game. Can't recommend this game. Glad its done with.

Ah, 90s. Adventure games. The age of moon logic. Do you know what is even better? Cartoon comedy moon logic. Okay okay, it's not nearly as bad as some of the non-cartoon offenders, but you know, few bad puzzles still spoil the overall fun because you would not be able to trust developers anymore with providing you with a good brain entertainment. So yea. Eh. And sadly, the game doesn't have much going as adventure either. The plot is thin, slow-paced, as slow as a pool of tar. The jokes are mostly miss. Interaction is not terribly interesting, albeit it's fun at the start of a game. It's like... comedy. All the random stuff. But it's only able to force a smile out of me for the most parts. Didn't enjoy exploring much either. Controls not terrible comfortable and locations were too lolrandom at times. I sure didn't feel like I was searching for clues, just usual random. Damn, I would want to write so much more and analyse this games, but I guess I am too old to even bother with 90s adventure games. I've lost my trust in them, so kinda hard to believe in them.

I was actually totally blindsided how great the dialogue in this game was. There are so many great, layered lines! And the delivery on the part of the voice actors so amazing. I remember when the circus owner informed me that his clothes where actually his "naturally green and vinyl-like" skin in the most cheerful, deadpan voice imaginable and I was absolutely floored. This games humor was really ahead of it's time, so it's kind of disappointing the gameplay hasn't aged very well. The game doesn't really have a "three trials" structure at the beginning to guide you so you kind of just awkwardly poke around without any real direction. It was pretty common for me to put a lot of effort into solving a puzzle only to get something I couldn't use until much later. The cartoon logic puzzles aren't too bad for the genre, but they still tend be more annoying than satisfying. Usually when I was stuck, it was because I missed out on some out of the way item rather than the puzzle being very challenging. Sam will often let you know if your own the right track for some puzzles is a nice touch though, it was big help in the tunnel of love scene. It also doesn't help that the environments generally aren't very exciting to explore. It fits the satirical tone of the game for you to be visiting a bunch of lame tourist traps, but it's little disheartening when your stuck and you have to wander around the World's Largest Ball of Twine or the Celebrity Vegetable Patch to see if there was something you missed. There are some bright spots like the Mystery Vortex though. But despite these flaws, there's still a lot to love about this game and I'm really glad I played it. It's gorgeous and consistently funny throughout. Even if you have little patience for 90s adventure game design, I would at least recommend watching a playthrough on Youtube.

It’s hard to pick a favorite when it comes to Lucasarts adventures but if I had to choose, it would be Hit the Road. I’ve been a lifelong fan of the comic and cartoon that Sam & Max come from and it would be hard to ever get a better adaptation than this for a game. The voice actors really bring these ridiculous characters to life and the humor is dark and witty. Dropping the verb interface for a simple icon based system makes it easy to enjoy everything the game has to offer.

This is my first time playing through Sam & Max Hit The Road, and I've gotta say, I'm surprised by how little I had heard of this game up until I came to GOG. This game was really charming and I am very happy that I played through it. That said, it was over far too quickly for me. I beat the game in around 6 hours without a walkthrough and that's because even though the humor may be somewhat adult at times, the game is still designed for children in terms of difficulty. That's not really a problem as I still got stumped two or three times during the game, but I would have compensated for the lower difficulty of the puzzles by having more environments to explore. Still, it was a very memorable game, and I'll treasure Sam & Max Hit the Road as one of my favorite Point & Click adventure games, as I am a huge fan of the comic book-style / cartoony niche of the genre. I rarely laugh at jokes, in-game or otherwise, but Sam & Max got me a few times which surprised me quite a bit. If you think your sense of humor is 'dumb', you enjoy cartoon art styles and character, and you enjoy solving funny, cartoony but definitely logical inventory puzzles, I'd say you should give Sam & Max Hit the Road a shot, even at its low full price of $5.99