While Season One sports great gameplay for fans of the genre, there is a flaw in the package: the visuals can be quite distracting at times. The episodes really show their age in the graphics department. Nintendo's Wii has never been (and will never be) known for great graphics, but many of the visuals in Season One really stand out as being sub-par even for the Wii. Billboards and signs throughout the game are blurry and pixelated (like a really low-resolution web graphic blown up), making them sometimes impossible to read. The simplicity of the objects and characters in the game are fine, but the heavily pixelated textures applied to them just come across as sloppy and distracting, like the player is accidentally witnessing a bug or something he or she wasn't meant to see in the final game.
While the graphics are the game's low-point, the writing is where the game truly hits its heights. I was pleasantly surprised to find a wealth of humorous audio clips stemming from exhaustively large dialog options throughout the game. For example, when talking to Bosco, the owner of the "Inconvenience Store" next door to Sam and Max's office, about what he might have for sale, the simple command "Do you have any..." elicited numerous hilarious queries for odd items used in previous point-and-click games such as "an eggplant in the shape of a famous naturalist" or "fine leather jackets." There always seems to be plenty to do and talk about in the game, allowing for a wondrous sense of immersion into the wacky worlds the episodes present.
If you've got a Wii and you're a fan of point-and-click adventure games and/or of Sam and Max, buying Season One is a no-brainer. It's a fantastic collection of games that will give you hours upon hours of entertainment for an equally fantastic price.
Sam and Max: Season One is rated T (Teen) by the ESRB for Cartoon Violence, Crude Humor, Mild Language, Use of Alcohol and Use of Tobacco. This game can also be found on: PC.
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