Sam and Max: This Time it’s Virtual review: kiddish and gimmicky

Like many humourous VR experiences, Sam and Max: This Time it’s Virtual! Heavily relies on vococentric forms of comedy. Most of the jokes in this kiddish assortment of gimmicky activities and mini-games, loosely strung together by a goofy narrative, are derived from repartee between the titular characters: a laidback Irish Wolfhound in a suit and fedora (Sam, voiced by David Nowlin) and an energetic rascally rabbit (Max, voiced by David Boat). These knuckleheaded private investigators have goofed around in various mediums (including television, webcomics and video games) since premiering as comic book characters in the late 1980s. 

In their VR debut, we play a new recruit to their small detective agency, joining them in crime-busting and monster-fighting tomfoolery. Reflecting the limitations of present era VR, the characters can talk to us—and boy do they talk—but we can’t talk back, cast as a silent observer who must follow their instructions. This is apparent from the very first scene, in which we discover ourselves trapped in a tight space that’s revealed to be an upturned dumpster. 

“Hey you in there,” says Sam, “mind giving us a hand so we can save your keister?” Max instructs us to “put your arms up and lift!” After we do so, we discover ourselves on a street where a five-headed giant monster is creating chaos—establishing the experience’s cartoonish tone and hijinx-filled plot.

This is a compelling spatial reveal, transitioning from a boxed-in environment to a larger one revealing action and spectacle. We’re instructed to fire bazookas into the aforementioned beast while Max provides humorous distractions. Before long these distractions no longer work, prompting Sam to comment: “I was afraid that might happen. It appears that this menace from beyond is capable of temporarily learning from its mistakes.”

This reflects the simple essence of the comedy, the characters delivering amusing observations about something that’s just happened or is just about to. Their presence gives some personality to the experience, distracting from bareboned and banal gameplay consisting of throwaway tasks. For instance during our so-called police training, which is just a series of mini activities, there’s a carnival-esque shooting game with moving targets that appear and disappear inside three different settings: ranch, moon and graveyard. 

The writers clearly had some fun with the dialogue—particularly lines from the sassier and more loquacious Sam, who turns to us early on and says” kid, you’ve got moxie, nerve, spunk, and an overall joie de vivre that’s downright refreshing in this mechanized age.” Some dialogue sequences however are lazily staged, freezing us into place and stripping away our ability to move until the characters finish their spiels—a common, immersion-breaking technique that concentrates attention and removes our ability to miss key information. But it’s never justified and always the easy way out. There are many examples of productions that, insteading of freezing people into place, manipulate spatial arrangement to cater for the delivery of dialogue—such as Half-Life: Alyx and Vertigo 2. The former for instance often positions NPCs in areas that are subtly inaccessible (behind a desk for instance) to provide a stage-like setting for monologues.

Sam and Max: This Time it’s Virtual!’s attempts at more complex activities creates some frustrating moments. Not because these activities are conceptually difficult, but completing them involves figuring out what the game will allow us to do—ascertaining its rules, which should have been made clear. At one point in a supermarket, for example, we must take down a skeletal monster eating cereal. Sam gives us a riddle-like clue—“what makes cereal just fall apart”—but this clue is bogus. We know the answer is milk or water; we just don’t know what to do with that answer. 

The problem is solved by loading a water pistol with milk, which is something the game didn’t establish as an option. Here “solved” is a synonym for “fumbling around until you find the right combination.” Sam and Max: This Time it’s Virtual! feels, from beginning to end, like a piecemeal “make it up as you go along” experience. Of course the truth is the opposite: each portion of the game required considerable planning and development. But that doesn’t come across. There’s no consistency, no flair, no innovation. The most memorable elements involve the colour, personality and playful badinage of the titular characters.