Sam and Max: Season One (Wii: October, 2008)

I never thought it would be possible to find a small-statured creature hell-bent on destruction more loveable than myself. But, I may have met my match in the bunny-like Max of Sam and Max: Season One. The dynamic duo of Sam, a suit-wearing dog who runs around on his hind legs, and the naked aforementioned Max are freelance police detectives who do everything from taking their office phone back from their unwanted kleptomaniacal rat roommate, Jimmy Two-Teeth, to killing an evil reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln.

Sam and Max: Season One is a point-and-click adventure ported from the PC version released about a year ago. Prior to that, Episodes 1 through 6 had individual web releases spanning from October 2006 through May 2007. And before that, Sam and Max were the characters of a comic by a guy named Steve Purcell. But enough with the boring history lesson, let’s talk about the game.

This game restores my faith in a genre that hasn’t been entertaining since... well, ever. Each of the six episodes is full of brain-tickling puzzles, enough jokes to choke a rhinoceros, and a uniquely engaging plotline that contributes to the whole season’s overarching story.

If you think you’re good at solving puzzles or you don’t have any qualms with Googling for a walkthrough, you may be okay with simply renting this game. But, if you have a tougher time figuring the difference between the ins and the outs, it may end up being cheaper to buy it than checking it out from the local Stormwind Video over and over again. What, we can’t have video rental places in Azeroth? There’s enough on that tiny little Wii disc to give you a full 6 to 72 hours worth of puzzle-solving fun (I prefer not to make estimates on my readers’ intelligence). Previous Sam and Max fans could probably go without on this one, though. The only thing the Wii disc has that downloading the individual episodes doesn’t are some lame-ass excuses for “Special Features.” Paragraph-long character bios for 5 or 6 recurring characters and some uninteresting concept art. That’s it. Still, as a newcomer to the series, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It’s making me rethink my contract with The Donut Boys. I wonder if Telltale Games has room for a second mischievous being of lesser-than-average height...

Overall score: 8.5 out of 10, for an episodical… episodal… episodic… yeah, I think that’s it, episodic adventure of pointing and clicking at various things to achieve bizarre objectives and laugh at some zany jokes.

Hail to the Chimp (PlayStation 3: June, 2008)

What seems like forever ago now, I downloaded a demo of Hail to the Chimp. It seemed like a light-hearted and entertaining party game, enjoyable for me and a group of up to 3 of my closest friends/worst enemies to laugh our bums off for hours on end. Holy crap, did I just say bum? Sorry, I guess the British in that Kiki must’ve worn off on me....

Anyway, I’ve never been more wrong about a video game’s entertainment value. You see, the demo’s got maybe 20 minutes in it; the typical for a free demonstration of a larger product. Naturally, I assumed that since the demo was entertaining for the full 20 minutes, the full version would be just as entertaining, maybe not for the full length of time you’d put into it to see everything, but at least for most of it. Oh, how wrong I was... You ever go to a movie after seeing a trailer that makes you go, “Wow, that looks like a good movie,” and then leave when you realize you’d already seen all the best parts of it before you went in? That’s exactly what happened with Hail to the Chimp. 20 minutes is about all the time you need to spend on this game before you realize the rest of it will be exactly the same. All the mini-games are just slight modifications of the same damn thing. You compete with three other characters to collect clams, which, in the animal world are somehow the equivalent of electoral votes, and either throw in a ballot box, feed them to another clam, or beat more of them out of your opponents until you’ve got more than they do. “Variety” is apparently not a word in developer Gamecock’s vocabulary.

Looking around for the web for this game, you’ll find other reviewers agree with me whole-heartedly, but some actually hold this sorry excuse for entertainment in moderately high regard. That’s because there are some redeeming qualities in the game. Well... there’s one, anyway: humor. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the game is a satirical work of genius, but it’s at least a satirical work of higher than average intelligence. There are plenty of things to laugh at in this game. The problem, though, is that almost none of them have anything to do with actual gameplay. All the laughs come in the extra features and the cinematics, which can only be unlocked by playing through the monotonous single-player Campaign mode 20 times. In order to actually enjoy yourself and watch about 30 seconds of comedy, you’ve first got to subject yourself to 3 hours of torture (It’s a lot like watching “Comedy Central Presents...” in that way). Not only that, there’s no list available anywhere, in the game or even on the internet, to tell you what you have to accomplish in order to unlock specific extras. Basically, the whole “game” is about as entertaining as jamming your fingers into a paper shredder. It’s a lot of pain to go through for a tiny amount of comedy that’s actually pretty hard to find.

Overall score: 3 out of 10, for sucking less than some of the other games I've played.

Everybody's been wondering why The Chalice of Silvermoon and my Blog have been missing ever since BlizzCon 2008. Well, now I'm back, and I can tell you why: The Donut Boys, at least the two I THOUGHT were cool enough to bring with me to the convention, thought it would be funny to wrap me up in duct tape and leave me locked up in KikiJiki's hotel room. And I admit, that WOULD have been a great gag... if it weren't for the fact that the hotel he was staying at is a disease ridden, roach infested hell-hole where the cleaning staff only comes by ONCE A MONTH! I've got half a mind to just up and quit your stupid show right now!

But, my agent tells me I need the "publicity." So, I guess I'll stay. Besides, The Donut Boys should've learned their lesson, now- their talk show's been lacking it's only quality content for the last month. At any rate, now that I've escaped the clutches of the stickiest substance known to man (I'm not talking about the duct tape), I'm ready to get back to my true calling: blogging! A lot of things are on the way over the coming week. Keep watching closely.