SAM AND MAX VR REVIEW // Family Fun or a Funless Fail // Sam and Max VR Oculus Quest 2 Gameplay
232Sam and Max VR (or Sam and Max This Time its Virtual) launched today onto the Oculus Quest platform after a long period of slowly building anticipation. Sam and Max have been dormant in the videogame world since 2010 when Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse was released and after 11 long years away from the spotlight I'm left wondering if they should've stayed gone for a little longer after playing this newest installment... Welcome to my Sam and Max VR review, all gameplay here was captured on an Oculus Quest 2 and all these salty opinions are my own!
I really tried to enjoy this game but ultimately I was left bored and constantly wondering "who is this for?". The Sam and Max VR gameplay loop probably won't engage adults or fans of the franchise, a simple set of minigames that play out like a day at the carnival (throw balls at this target, pop balloons with this dart, play baseball, slowly walk through an unimaginative obstacle course) really left me feeling like this is a VR game from a different era. The classic point & click adventures of Sam & Max's past could've been beautifully translated into a VR adventure but instead we spend most of our time throwing balls at targets. Back when we didn't really know what we could do with VR every game felt like a set of unconnected minigames and that comes back in a big way here. So then I thought "okay perhaps it's for kids" but the writing kept reminding me that children won't understand half of these references (The Evil Dead, The Shining, Greta Thunburg and Kathleen Turner were amongst some of the more bizarre pop culture references) so I was left looking at a game that feels like it doesn't quite know who it's audience is.
With a painfully simple set of minigames and writing that consistently fell flat in terms of humour I can't reasonably recommend Sam and Max VR for it's launch day price point. I'd love to see another stab at a Sam and Max VR game in the future but instead something that is a little more faithful to their roots, a large scale escape room style set of interconnected detective stories would definitely work better than what we have been given here. At $30 (I haven't seen the UK price yet) I'd say there are a tonne of colourful hilarious VR games more worthy of your time if you're looking for a dose of irreverant parody filled gameplay (Accounting+, Trover Saves the Unvirse, Job & Vacation Simulator, Virtual Virtual Reality, Floor Plan 2...)
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro & Competition
2:47 - Hub area & content overview
6:44 - Obstacle course gameplay
13:48 - Minigames galore (baseball, shooting gallery & escape room)
22:55 - Convenience store mission
26:26 - Verdict