Sam & Max: This Time It's Virtual! Reviews

Lifelong fan of Sam and Max so I was really excited about this game. Had to get a refund because it was unplayable. The controller alignment is about 45 degrees off from your actual hands, so trying to aim a gun is impossible. Interacting with objects is not natural. Throwing mechanics and physics are the worst I've ever seen. Turning movement is so slow that it takes 5 seconds to turn 180 degrees and the screen is jumpy while you do it. No way to adjust it. Never felt sick in vr until now. The first mission had a bug where the thing I was trying to build shrank to a microscopic size and I lost it. Lots of minor UI issues that combine to make a huge UI issue.

This nearly made me throw up all over the floor. I shouldn't play VR games. Love Sam and Max tho so 10/10

I don't fully know what I was expecting with this, but this game isn't that. I'll start with the positive - as a fan of the series, there are things referenced here from every aspect of the franchise rather than just pulling from Telltale's work, with references to the comics, TV show, and Hit the Road. You will probably find something that makes you go "oh, that thing!" And now the bad - this is primarily a minigame collection. Most are at least competent, although I've found a few to be badly explained, and some are kind of glitchy - but even with the best of them, it's hard to shake the feeling of "I could be playing a different VR game dedicated to this specific concept and having more fun with the gameplay". There are some walk around adventure segments as well - but I'm 2/3 of the way through and some of the puzzles get very obtuse in these without the same kind of progressive hint system that Telltale's games had. The dialogue can be funny, but with Sam & Max primarily focused on encouraging/insulting the player, they lose something in terms of playing off each other (along with limited dialogue opportunities with other characters). It all adds up to something that isn't awful, by any stretch, but it is also something I would struggle to recommend; I don't know if someone that isn't a dedicated Sam & Max fan would put up with the less polished aspects, and a dedicated fan might have their issues with the difference in gameplay. As a note on accessibility: Full use of both hands is required (there's a surprising amount of rock climbing). If you are colourblind, there are story critical segments requiring quickly identifying colours and taking action within a few seconds; I did not see an option to skip these segments or to display a textual identification over the colour elements (admittedly I have not checked the options beyond the ones displayed on first boot). Subtitles are available in a fairly large font (no alternates/options to reduce size) - there are a few cases where these either miss things or differ from the spoken dialogue, but not too bad. Locomotion can be handled by teleporting or analogue control; turning is always done in steps. There are options for seated and standing play. I have played so far standing in a very small play space (Quest 1 with Oculus Link) - if this describes your play space as well, be very careful during the FizzBall minigame, as trying to do baseball bat swings in particular can result in you hitting something outside your boundary.

While this game has the spirit of Sam & Max, I cannot recommend it in its current form The graphics are inconsistent with most environments and props having low resolutions while characters like Sam, Max and the out of place demons with high resolution textures, however graphics don't mean shit if it has good game-play. The mini-games are okay, but the head defusing is frustrating because sometimes it functions perfectly, but usually it doesn't detect grabbing. The puzzles don't feel like Sam & Max puzzles unfortunately since you are limited with item interactions. If you want a new Sam & Max experience, get it. If you want a neat Sam & Max game with fun puzzles, save your money.

Started off great but ran into a progression breaking bug with my Valve Index controllers. So far it's a severely disappointing port to what seems like a great game. Will alter my review when it becomes playable. Don't buy it til they iron out these game breaking kinks. ----edit--- Setting FPS/Refresh rate to 90 fixed the mallet bug, waiting on the def to fix hand alignment, but for now it's playable.

I WANT TO LIKE THIS GAME. I really like Sam & Max games for their quirky (corny) comedy and the universe they build. And as a point-and-click game, VR really is where Sam & Max should reside. It was pretty great seeing the amateur police duo at scale and in front of you. The simple graphics lent itself to the VR build. The vibe of the game was right on the money, and if you've played a Sam and Max game, this really is a treat... until it becomes a chore. The controls and gameplay are just too rough (for now, Sept 2021). When holding onto things, the grip is pitched too low, so you'll need to unnaturally crank your wrist way higher/lower than you normally would. It's just weird. A lot of the gameplay queues aren't obvious, like it'd be great if an item highlighted to indicate you can actually interact with it. Otherwise you can blow a lot of time trying to grab things you think might be clues but aren't actually interactable. Throwing things is awful, holding on to things is weird and often you can't change where you grip an item, and you can actually miss reloading your weapon if you don't set the clip in the sweet spot of the gun. It's just a lot of little things that, spread throughout the whole game, make it kind of a hassle to play through. I think there's a decent game in here, the controls just need to be patched up. Hoping they do!

This may be a unpopular opinion, but I'm going to give it more credit than it gets from others. Starting with the only negative that grinds me about this game, they really need to fix the avatar movement controls. The only way I can move after climbing a wall is by switching between joystick and teleport modes. People complain that it's too different from the other games, Hit The Road, the TellTale trilogy... I say it has more in common with the cartoon. I'd call it a VR interactive cartoon instead of a VR game. I enjoyed the humour and the call backs to the games and cartoon were nice. In my opinion, it passed the test, but barely. I'm giving it a thumbs up, but this is just my personal opinion.

So yeah, it is a very fun game to play. BUT..... There are a LOT of bugs in this game, nearly making the game unplayable. Sure, you have to figure out the puzzles by actually paying attention to your surroundings (as is normal in Sam and Max games), but the bugs are NUMEROUS. A few I found: - Finnicky hoverboarding - Grab mechanics not fully optimized - Batting game nearly impossible to hit upwards - Accidentally pushing something I wasn't supposed to in the taming round - Screwdriver physics broken But by far the worst part were the BOMB DEFUSING PORTIONS. I couldn't properly hold on to the bomb, I could not grab some of the handles to follow through, and every time I did grab the handles, it defaulted to grabbing the ENTIRE OBJECT. I sat through the defusing stages for almost 10 minutes each time (thank GOD it didn't send me back to the beginning of the level.) But yeah, putting all of those things aside, I'm finally glad to see my two favorite Freelance Police members finally at it again after such a long time. The dialogue was funny, the pacing was good, and the minigames were fun as hell. Just one thing... Happy Giant, if you're reading this... FIX THE DAMN GAME.

I'm only an hour into the game, but so far I've yet to come across anything too disrupting, regarding the VR side of things. Things work how they are mostly supposed to, although I would like a setting for hand alignment when holding items (most notably weapons). I enjoy the banter and dialogue, and it has a homey feel to it. I hope the bad bugs get squashed soon enough! EDIT/UPDATE: I finished the game on a Valve Index, without encountering any VR related problems. I clocked in at around 3,5 hours, and as a fan of S&M:Hit the Road, I felt it delivered what it aimed to. A short and simple adventure using VR, with the boys. I don't get the people calling it a minigame collection, then again they haven't finished their Freelance Police training, so what would they even know about catching bad guys? All in all, a fun ride with some puzzles. And a talking dog with his naked rabbit buddy.

(Played on a Valve Index) In it's current state, I can not recommend the game, and I don't think any updates will really solve a whole lot of the issues it has. The only positive I can list is that the dialog feels... mostly on point. There's a lack of "whimsical cynicism" in Sam and Max's dialog, but more or less they do sound like the Sam and Max from past games. Other than that, here's the list of issues I kept having with it: - A severe lack of interactivity in the world that makes a point and click game look like an open sandbox, especially compared to past Sam and Max games. - Sam and Max don't look at each other when talking, giving a really awkward and unnatural look as they stare at you. - Lack of detail and empty areas all over. It's a lot of walking and maybe the occasional hidden joke to find, but mostly nothing to interact with and get dialog out of Sam and Max. - Poor rendering distances and often times aggressive geometry culling in spots with a clear line of sight. I had moments where whole buildings would straight up vanish when looking at them. - Frustrating and uncomfortable to use VR controls. Holding objects does not feel natural and requires you to aim them at awkward angles. - Inconsistent puzzle mechanics, the bomb defusing ones were what made me give up due to either being unable to activate the correct mechanism, or accidentally setting the wrong one off as I go for the correct one. The game feels like a very early VR game where people were just barely getting the ropes on how to make a VR game, in a similar vein to when everyone wanted to add motion controls to their game back when the Nintendo Wii was popular. Did this game need to be in VR? No, not really, but there are definitely ways to make a VR game feel justified with it's mechanics. Graphical issues aside, the game lacks the past Sam and Max charm, which isn't something you can easily patch in. In past games, there was a tremendous amount of dialog that was accessible around anything. Every room was an adventure in of itself, and every object was guaranteed to have some witty line of dialog from the duo, some observable nihilistic joke that could be made.