Clarification: This is also known as "Sam & Max Season Two" and is a package deal of five episodic games. The episodes are normally sold for about $9 each, but buying it as the Season Two pack gives you all five episodes for about $35. This is a pretty good deal, so episodes 201 through 205 of the Sam & Max series are being reviewed as a bundle product. That said...

I know, I know; "this has been out for a while, why are you just now reviewing it?" That’s because I only recently got around to it, and it’s definitely my loss; the latest ’episodic games’ from Telltale about Steve Purcell’s ostensibly crimefighting dog and rabbit duo are just as funny as Season One was. The core gameplay hasn’t changed at all, it still consists of wandering around a variety of locations, gathering items, talking to people, and solving puzzles that range from the immediately intuitive to the outright zany. It’s a lot like Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and similar point and click adventures, moving at a relaxed pace and wanting the player to win. The writing quality hasn’t changed either, still full of seemingly random jabs at topics from classic video games to politics and ’emo goth’ stereotypes. I’ve favorably compared Sam & Max to various Brooksfilms and shows like The Critic in the past, and it’s still true this time around.

Like most of their other appearances, Sam & Max are supposedly fighting crime and saving the world from all sorts of problems but their success rate is kind of hit or miss; one episode may have them trying to save Santa Claus, then messing with series history in another. While each episode does stand on its own merits, they combine to tell a rather amusing story toward the end and also build on events from the previous season. The gameplay is very much of the "use taco on book to create rainbows" adventure variety, but it’s just the means of telling a story.

Said story is hilarious, and is the real reason to play this game since the point and click adventure aspect is admittedly pretty basic. When you’re on the right track to solving a situation, you’ll be treated to all kinds of unusual environments, backed by hilarious writing and even some good sight-based jokes. And when you’re on the wrong track, you’ll usually stumble onto something worth chuckling about anyway and these episodic games manage to be fun even when you’re not playing ’correctly.’ There is no true way to lose or die, you can only suffer minor setbacks for your mistakes, so it’s fair to say the designers wanted you to be entertained and relaxed. With each of the five episodes lasting around three to five hours on a normal run through them, that’s a fair amount of time to be laughing.

The engine has seen some improvements since the first season (though many of them have been patched in to other versions of Season One), the most notable being the ability to double-click an area to run toward it, saving you a lot of time that would normally be spent with regular walking. Many of the episodes also offer some basic mini-games now, letting you play homages to classics like Punch-Out and Paperboy. Things like these do a lot to make the game more fun and less tedious, so they’re very welcome improvements.

The only bad things I can say about some of Season Two’s episodes are that they do have a few unintuitive puzzles (but the same could be said of almost all adventure games, I suppose), and there are one or two puzzles whose solutions lie in areas you won’t easily see or think are relevant, leading to bouts of ’pixel hunting.’ But these are the exception, with most of the puzzles either being immediately reasonable to figure out, or coming to you with ample time to think on them.

All told, your $35 will get you about 15-20 hours of solid adventure gaming. It’s easy to play and the writing is full of great jokes and jabs at modern culture, leading to something that is relaxing as a game and hilarious as a story. The folks at Telltale continue to do a great job with bringing the insane, amusing world of Sam & Max to life, and this is the kind of game I can recommend to almost anyone. In fact, the only people I wouldn’t immediately suggest it to are those who haven’t played Season One yet; these episodes build on the original ones, meaning you should play it first and then pick this up. This is being reviewed well after its initial release, but Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space remains worth its full price tag even today!