Recent reviews by Estrogen Enjoyer

All my favorite characters looking and sounding better than they ever have. For those who don't know, Telltale also went back and (though I think it was with the help of a separate company) retouched the audio. This shines, throughout. Voices are crystal clear. Puzzled as to how they could keep the total game size so low; my biggest guess is that the assets no longer need to be installed separately. In terms of total game size (I think) it's smaller than the original series! Way to go!

Bosco's new voice actor does an OUTSTANDING job. It didn't take too long to get used to, and man I've played the originals far too many times for a dumb point and click game. But if getting used to new voice actors wasn't my forte, I probably wouldn't be a Sam and Max fan.

Joey Carmen is still in the game! He already adds so many great voices to the game, so it's fun to still be able character man in action!

If you haven't picked it up, please do! This is the best way to experience my favorite crime fighting couple tackle NYC. I've already finished it twice on the switch, and am now playing with friends on my PC in glorious 4K.

Replaying the third season, I find myself not knowing how they're going to up the ante when they get to it because it already looks so good, but it'd be a far way from the truth if I said I wasn't wetting my pants to find out.

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Edit: It is amazing how many people dislike this review, simply due to the fact that they disagree. Whether you agree or not with another's point of view, it is something to be respected. That goes the same, for myself; just because I didn't find this game enthralling, doesn't mean I don't have a major respect for the creative minds behind it.

Poor mechanic/thin story. This was a game that had so much potential, however it ended up trying way too hard to be clever. What seemed to be puzzles were just annoyances. You are introduced to the mechanics early on, and you, as the player, assume that these are going to develop into larger, more complecated puzzles. Instead, it just becomes reheated corn-cassorole type "you need to do this before you can proceed to the next room". Some "puzzles" were literally repeated throughout the game - this wasn't rewarding as the player, this just furthered your frustration.

And if you want to make the basis of your game completely story driven, then do that. I really enjoyed titles like "Gone Home" and "Dear Esther", because they did it right. They understood that in order to drive a story, you must do exactly that - drive the story. If you want to implement a mechanic on the players' way to discover the story, make sure it works. By that, I mean make sure that there is something about the mechanic that keeps the player interested in using it. A good example of mechanic working in harmony with story, is "Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons". If you're just going to be repeating the same thing over and over and over, get rid of it or heavily limit its use. Otherwise, what you're really ending up doing, is wasting peoples' time.

Now speaking directly to the story. The story was paper thin, and given clues that doesn't even take playing half the game to run into - and some of these clues are unavoidable. If you're paying attention, you can see what the allegory is behind the story the entire time. It does nothing to be subtle, but it gives the illusion of trying to be subtle, and that is where they fail. If you want to make one of those "everything will be explained in the end" kind of stories, make sure the player doesn't figure out the entire story before the end of the game.

Final point - if certain things don't make sense without some sort of external explaination, get rid of them. They have no point being there, and do not pertain to the actual story you're trying to contrive.

All in all, I would not recommend this game. It has potential, and if the developers ever try rebooting it, I'd give it a shot after listening to some reviews. If you want to try great story-driven games or great puzzle games, there are definitely better games out there that get the job done.