Sam & Max's first appearance was in 1987 in a comic book. Created by Steve Purcell, after his brother's drawings, the characters represented a parody of American popular culture. Sam is an anthropomorphic dog and works as a detective while Max is a "hyperkinetic rabbity thing" and Sam's best friend.

Though their first appearance was in a comic book, they are known especially from the computer game, Sam & Max Hit the Road created in 1993 by LucasArts. In this adventure game, they are private investigators in New York. They use creative solutions to fight evil, but sometimes they need to rely on weapons. If they have to travel to other locations than their office they use a 1960 Desoto Adventurer. The sick and sarcastic humour, and the interesting puzzles made the game well received by the critics. Years later Sam and Max became even cartoon stars. In 2002 LucasArts announced a sequel, but in 2004 they canceled the project. Telltale is the only company that has revived the series.

The game is designed in a 3D environment, and uses the classical point and click system. Compared to other similar products, the interaction system is much less difficult. You just need to point an object and if it is interactive, an explanation will appear in words. Sam, the main character has also an inventory represented by a box board. From the environment you can gather only objects that will be later used in puzzles. There are not so many key-objects in the game, so the puzzles will be based mainly on weird, hilarious but still logical solutions.

They've all became slaves to Brady, who wants to spread his hypnosis in the whole world through his free video tapes. These tapes are delivered to each store by his "apprentices", the Soda Poppers and contain an eye exercise called the Eye-Bo. Will Sam and Max find Brady and defeat him? It's up to you. You just have to pay attention to the dialogs. When you think you just start to understand the game, the first episode is already over. At least the first episode has an acceptable end, giving you the impression that you just saw a cartoon episode.

Being a classical, the graphics and the sound are created in the classical manner. The fully polygonal graphics are easy on the eye and perfectly matches the cartoon style. You don't need in such games next gen engines to render small objects (like in Broken Sword 4). Telltale realized this fact and used designers that could replace the loss of a high tech graphical engine by good drawings. As simple as it looks, the graphics are much more correctly displayed than many other games with much better graphical engines.

This game gets another plus from the voice acting. Though they are not the same as in the old LucasArts title, their voices fit like a glove for every character played, and in the end the result is satisfying. And with a jazzy soundtrack, the game gets that private investigator flavor.

You don't have to be worried. Even though the game will be released in episodes, every episode will deliver a different story and a new portion of good humor mixed with interesting but still easy puzzles. Every episode costs $8.95. If you want to buy a season package, you will pay $34.95. You can even order a DVD copy for which you have to pay an additional fee.

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Gameplay: 78%

Some of you will say that this is a big mark. But the gameplay also suites a casual player. While most of the adventure games create a sense of frustration for the normal player, Culture Shock can deliver intellectual relaxation for a gamer that lost too many frags in an online match. The subtle satire to the American Popular Culture, implemented in the dialogs, mixed with sick humor, creates a unique story.

Simple and correctly displayed. Although the series changed the perspective from a 2D environment to a 3D one, the graphics didn't lose that cartoon feeling. The characters look like you already know them from the first game or from the comic books. There are no hidden key-objects, so you can easily remark them.

No mistakes in the voice acting part. The actors' voices, used in the game, match perfectly to the characters they interpret. The soundtrack consists in some jazz vibes, perfect to get you deeper into the game atmosphere.

A game without any 'bling, bling' elements. In conclusion no big hardware expectations. Though there are some long loading times while you enter or exit a building.