Ice Sta­tion Santa is the first install­ment for the second “season” of Tell­tales expan­sion of the Sam & Max uni­verse. I grew up with the orig­i­nal Sam & Max, and so when I heard tell of a new com­pany taking over the title - since LucasArts is run by morons and dis­con­tin­ued the title - I was a little wor­ried. Hell I remem­ber the short-​lived car­toon, which though enjoy­able had screwed with my young sen­si­bil­i­ties. The voices weren’t the same and it really bugged me.

The basis of this episode is that Sam & Max receive a won­der­ful present - The Maimtron 9000 - That tries to murder them while recit­ing 80’s music lyrics. This leads to find­ing out that it was a gift, sent to you by Santa, who by the way is toting a Red Rider hand-​held machine gun. You take off to the North Pole, and the mayhem and hilar­ity ensues. The writ­ing in this episode is just as good as the others… though to be honest I can’t say that they’re been any improve­ment. They’ve all pretty much sus­tained really solid script­ing from the get go.

I’m happy to say that Tell­tale Games (who is made up of former LucasArts employ­ees) have done an admirable job of reviv­ing and pro­gress­ing the Sam & Max uni­verse. The voices still aren’t the orig­i­nals, but the game makes up for it by having a stun­ningly twisted sto­ry­line, borderline-​raunchy jokes, and the same feel as the orig­i­nal (that is to say, totally and won­der­fully screwed up). There have been numer­ous improve­ments to the envi­ron­ment from the first season, includ­ing new areas, upgrad­ing of old areas, new char­ac­ters, and the abil­ity to run over Tor­ture me Elmurs. Let’s not forget that the game delves into tem­po­ral mechan­ics by cre­at­ing self-​fulfilling para­doxes. I’m always game for those.

I did feel that this episode was a little short and a little aim­less. I got stuck at one point simply because I forgot about one item. ONE. Now granted, I could have turned the hint level right up and gotten help, but I really shouldn’t have to. These points really hurt what would have oth­er­wise been fairly solid game play.

In the end, this was a pur­chase I cannot pos­si­bly regret. The game had me laugh­ing out loud at least every 5 min­utes, 1 minute if you count any­thing to do with Pimp le Car. it’s a little aim­less, but I can for­give that given the qual­ity of the game.

7/10

PS. For the fans out there who have a touch of the engi­neer­ing bug, here is a tuto­r­ial on how to make your own Sam & Max Terror Level alert sign. I don’t have the drive to build it, but it seems like a pretty straight for­ward tuto­r­ial. Have fun!