The second episode comes with nothing new, and can be treated as a stand alone story by somebody that has never played a Sam and Max game. But what's the magic of a series, if you watch just one episode?

Like in the first episode, the story is the main reason that makes you play the game further (or more to say, a series of comic incidents). Myra Stump, the host of a talk show keeps the audience captive in the studio and refuses to stop the show.

The two buddies must figure out the situation. In order to enter the talk-show, Sam and Max must play in some TV shows (very common to what we see today at the TV), like a sitcom, a cooking show, a gameshow, and even an 'American Idol' show. The ones that already played the first part with Sam and Max can imagine what hilarious moments they create in such aspects. I do believe that this part is much more colorful in terms of story, but you will discover some expressions and locations already used in the first episode. I'm talking about the expressions used to explain different objects from the same locations as already present in the first episode (Sam and Max office, Sybil's office and Bosco's shop). Unfortunately some of these locations are still used as key locations for some puzzles, so you have to return to them pretty soon.

The voice acting remains good and the dialog options are wide. Actually the dialog is the key to success for this series. You will browse the dialog lines only to see what new replies will Max to Sam give. The best example for this nonsense replies, but still extremely comic, is the song played by Sam at the Embarrassing Idol Show. You can choose different sets of lyrics which in the end create the song played by Sam.

 

Just read below what melody I have created:

Full of hidden meanings, ha?!

The new players will enjoy this second episode more than the veteran players. Simply because some of the locations and dialogs from the first episode are present here as well.

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Gameplay: 77

The learning curve of the game is somewhere from 15 min. up to half an hour. So the game still is proper to play by almost any gamer. The new location (the studio) is much more colorful and with Sam and Max's office, Sybil's office and Bosco's shop, the game area seems larger. For someone that has already played the first episode, the gameplay runs smoothly and very fast. I might say too fast. You can end up the game in almost 90 min, but if you are a casual player and never played such games, you can play up to 3 or 4 hours.

Little adjustments to the graphics. The characters don't look so edgy anymore.

The voice acting almost perfect. The new actors playing the new characters are doing their job. The soundtrack is the same but with some new variations on the jazz style.

This episode gave me the feeling that its running smoother than its predecessor.