Recent reviews by Zebrazilla

Better with mods.

Better than the rest.

There's an amazing game here that have been masterfully polished to run on modern machines. I just can't in good conscience recommend it and I implore every prospective customer reading this review to be vigilant of future Skunkape Games releases.

Unfortunately the remaster is not wholly faithful to the original release; the developer has for as of yet undisclosed reasons chosen to recast the voice actor for one of the most prominent and reoccurring characters of the game, named Bosco.

Edit: Since originally writing this review the developer has stated the reason for recasting the voice actor in question, saying that "the bottom line is he was voiced by a white actor doing a stereotypical impression of an African American that made us cringe fourteen years later. We wanted to make this right by casting a black actor in the role."

This voice actors interpretation of the character, while strictly professional, is objectively less energetic and eccentric than the original voice actors performance, fans should be aware of this as it does change the tone throughout the game. They have also made some tweaks to the dialogue and changed a few jokes here and there, changes that the developer did not disclose until revealed by customers and fans of the series. Prior to release it was explicitly stated by the developer that jokes had not been changed.

The developer initially forgot about the changes to dialogue, in their own words, saying that "these changes were so minimal that we forgot all about them", yet when these changes were discovered upon release they did publicly admit to these changes and stated that they "were uncomfortable including [the removed jokes] in a game in 2020. [...] These don’t change the game experience and we feel strongly that it was the right thing to do."

My opinion is that it is hypocritical of the developer to make these changes to the game if they "were so minimal that we forgot" and "don't change the game experience", yet also they "feel strongly that it was the right thing to do" due to being "uncomfortable" otherwise. So why didn't they just keep the jokes intact? These changes were, in so many words, completely unnecessary and I strongly feel that this was done solely to pander to an audience that most likely would not have had an interest in the series either way.

Edit: Since originally writing this review the developer has gone back and rerecorded some of the lines for the character they had recast, stating that "we want the new Bosco performance to be as good as it can be, including making a strong first impression. As we’ve evaluated feedback to the new acting, one recurring comment we’ve seen is that Bosco doesn’t sound at first like the paranoid shopkeeper players remember." They chose to keep the altered dialogue when rerecording, with their latest statement being that "we had the opportunity to tweak a few jokes that also hadn’t aged well." In so doing they further cemented their stance and made it clear that any future Skunkape product, such as potential remasters of other seasons of the Sam & Max franchise, are at risk for containing similar seemingly capricious and completely unnecessary changes to dialogue.

It is for these reasons that I will not and can not with good conscience recommend this game and strongly advise everyone reading this to be careful with future releases from this developer. I love the series and do love that they put effort into remastering this game, I wish I could've recommended the game. Having bought the original 3 seasons at the time when they were being produced by Telltale and loving them then, I have to confess that I bought this release on release date without so much as a second thought. That will not happen again with Skunkape Games. I will not buy future releases from this developer without first thoroughly scrutinizing what others say, especially if it's a remaster or remake.

Gives me the exact same feeling as 'Where's Waldo?' did when I was a kid and it's glorious!

By the time the whole thing ends; instead of turning the pages back to the beginning and going through the same ones again, there's a ton of additional maps made by other players. There's some real nuggets of gold in terms of user made maps that holds up well compared to the ones made by the original developers.

My only wish is that there were more time periods, it does feel like it falls a bit short in potential in that it stops in the Western era. Hopefully we'll be seeing more in the future! Even with that said, for the price (7,99€) it's definitely worth picking up as it is.

A decent FMV experience and a good little achievement hunt.

It's a bit on the short side but somewhat makes up for it with the number of choices possible. Some scenes are a bit trivial in their changes and can be easy to miss, both in terms of spotting the differences as well as actually getting them to trigger. Thankfully they have a scene counter as well as a feature for skipping scenes you have already seen once you have played through the game twice.

Cinematography, set design, lighting, audio, music, acting and most of everything is excellent. Keep in mind however that the dialogue is originally in Russian and the voices are therefore dubbed if you are playing this in English, but the dubbing is excellent as well so likely you won't be too bothered by it. It's possible to switch over to Russian however and keep English subtitles.

All in all recommended! Especially if you can get it with a discount.

Been waiting for this engine to be used in a game since 2005 and dabbling with the early prototypes that were available. It's a stepping stone of sorts and thus far it's very promising. While it's fully playable in its current form and there's enough gameplay to keep you busy for a while, be prepared that it's still early days and buying this should be seen as an investment of sorts. I'm definitely hoping that Infinity: Quest for Earth get made some day, but for now I am content with this!

Short and eerie experience that'll leave you scarred. Yes, recommended!

Neverending blast in local co-op! Up there with TowerFall. Get it and get addicted.

This game is a revelation for I finally understand number stations.

We are all as one, we move together in unison; we are alone, together.

An already classic game becomes an instant classic again! Undoubtedly this is the game we will look back on in 10 years time as the moment where VR was taken seriously; also we will probably still be playing this game due to the insane life extension added by the power of mods.