BUY THE FIRST SEASON AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
PLATFORM: PC
ESRB RATING: N/A
DEVELOPER: Telltale Games
PUBLISHER: Telltale Games, GameTap
Oh, how I love this series. The best damn adventure game around continues its second season with a third episode that is close to my dark, dark heart, since it involves zombies.
I’m not sure where the obsession with the raving undead came about but there’s seriously a dozen raving zombie movies out there. They all suck, but the good guys and gals at Telltale know how to make things right.
THE PITCH
“Sam and Max Meet Frankenstein!”
There really is no rest for the wicked. Sam and Max are back from their adventures at the Bermuda triangle, only to find out that zombies have attacked their city! Well, they’re not really attacking, but they’re annoying and stinky and keep moaning at all hours of the night. Our sociopathic duo trace the source of the infestation back to a zombie factory in Stuggart, which is some European town. It’s the kind of backwards hick town that has a castle on a mountain that the locals are afraid of and don’t mention, of course.
They head to the castle and find out that not only are the zombies all flocking there, they’re…. dancing.
Turns out that the person who’s responsible for this plague is a Eurotrash vampire with nipple rings, who wants to dance the night away with his undead minions.
That’s not all of the troubles you’ll have to deal with. Meanwhile back home, Sybil has officially broken up with Abraham Lincoln’s statue’s head, and is back on the prowl. Can you play matchmaker and get them back together? And where the hell is Bosco?
If that isn’t enough, well… look what else happens.
Need I say more? Play this sucker!
THE PLAY
Along with the usual pointing, clicking, and moving your cursor around, there’s another little minigame here. It’s reminiscent of Paperboy, expect instead of delivering papers to mailboxes you’re throwing cds at the zombies shambling around aimlessly. Why cds? Because the C.O.P.S. are trying to market a new ISP to the untapped zombie market, of course. That’s a big dollar. Very smart.
It’s not much, but it is nice to see that we’re getting a different minigame for each episode to change things around once in a while.
THE PRESENTATION
Same as before, duh. Though if you’ve been following the series since the beginning you’ll notice that the opening and closing scenes are getting more polished as it goes on, and they’re doing a great job of making the game cinematic. They do a clever way of throwing you into the story this time. The storytelling and plot is of course secondary to the humor and characters in this game, but they do a nice job of getting you excited for the where the game’s going to go next.
The new locations are fun, and the new characters are hysterical, undoubtedly the best so far this season. The heartbroken Frankenstein monster needs his own spin-off game. We can only hope they all make more
appearances. There are tons of laugh out loud moments here…. the jokes in this one really are top notch, and there are points where you won’t know which dialogue option to pick because they’re all so goddamn funny. Like this one, where you’re knocking out some rhymes to appeal to the zombies’ dark view of life:
THE VERDICT
This is more like it. Moai Better Blues was probably the weakest episode of both seasons so far, but this is amazing stuff once again. If I have one serious complaint with it, it’s that the locations are getting stale. If there is a Season 3 (hopefully!) they’re going to have to move us to a new place… it feels like they’ve wrung the most out of the ol’ hood that they possibly can.