Xbox 360® owning fans of talking anthropomorphic dogs, hyperactive rabbity things and great gaming comedy rejoice! Telltale today announced that Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space will launch on Xbox Live® Arcade this Wednesday. All five critically-acclaimed episodes of the award-winning series’ second season will be bundled together and sell for 1600 Microsoft Points – a great deal for five games at only 320 points each.

This is exactly what this week needed. A little Telltale love. Be sure to check out the game on XBLA. I’ll be doing a review on it shortly.

Gaming for me started in the early years of my childhood. Evolving from NES to Apple IIe to the glory days of the PC. During the glory days Lucas Art’s wasn’t just releasing the next iteration of the Star Wars Franchise. They were releasing these Point N Click adventures and they were great. Now I’d played plenty of Point n Clicks back in my time ranging from King’s Quest up to Full Throttle. The sad thing was for me during this time one particular Point N Click slipped through my grubby mouse clicking fingers. This jewel was constantly advertised and various demos were included in almost all Lucas Art’s Games. This game of course was Sam & Max. I heard the series was going through a rebirth and I got really excited well for a moment and then I saw the PC requirements. Again to my dismay I would be unable to play Sam & Max lucky for me Telltale Games has released it on both the Wii and the Xbox 360. How does the Point and Click hold up to today’s standards? A question that I shall answer.

Gameplay:

I got to play the XBLA version of Sam & Max and from the very beginning it was very clear that Point N Click is far from dead. The Gameplay is pretty much the same as it’s always been. You Point your cursor on something and then you click. This was handled very interesting considering the transition from Mouse to Controller. Your left stick essentially controlled the cursor while your A Button was your Click. I have to say that it worked out very nicely and it was quite a relief to see the cursor. Some Point N Clicks attempted to remove the cursor and replace it with text on the screen. Often times you would miss items and it became more of a pain. The thing that’s sets this game apart from most is the story and humor. This isn’t King’s Quest this is Sam & Max which essentially means think outside of the box. From Dropping Bowling Bowls from Open Window or feeding Actors Cow Pies the Humor never stops. It’s also interesting in how the game is broken up. It’s broken up into multiple chapters, at first I had my concerns that it would make the game feel choppy. After a couple of Chapters I discovered quite the opposite, it actually made the game flow better. It was also fun to load up a New Chapter and be intrigued with how the Game Elements would change. Each Chapter had various types of themes that would also effect characters that you know. It made it really fun to always expect something new.

Sound:

This game delivers the sound and then some. One thing that certainly stood out was the Voice Acting. Like most of the newer Point and Click titles there is full voice overs. Which is one of the bigger drawing points of the game. The Diolouge is always pretty funny and at times there are those one jokes that just push to a LOL status. The Music was also a nice touch, adding to what felt like a really polished game.

Graphics:

I was really surprised how well the transition was from 2D to 3D. The characters look solid, especially Max. It really helped set the tone, it looked cartoony but still with a certain edge. At times I was surprised by how well everything seemed to mesh together. It was also nice to see the Lip Syncing was down pretty well to. Really added and extra depth on each of the characters.

Overall:

Well I can say with great confidence that the Point N Click Adventures is far from dead. They hold up really well to today’s standards. With the recent announcement of Monkey Island it seems that there is still plenty of interest in the genre. Hopefully it will only continue and slowly evolve. With consoles going the route of motion control it only appears that it will. I can only imagine what a Point N Click with Natal could be like :)

The Good News keeps coming with the recent announcement of Tales of Monkey Island To the Latest Press Release from Telltale Games:

Sam & Max Save the World, which was known as Sam & Max Season One for previous releases, has been enhanced for Xbox LIVE Arcade with achievements, widescreen and HD graphic support, and updates to the gameplay controls. The game is in English with subtitles in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. The Xbox LIVE Arcade download will sell for 1600 Microsoft points—less than 300 points per episode.

I’m really looking forward to playing through Sam and Max. Especially on XBLA.