REVIEW: Wallace & Gromit and Sam & Max (Xbox 360)

Scribbled on August 13th, 2009 by Jonah Falcon
Filed in Adventure, Microsoft Xbox 360, Reviews, Xbox Live Arcade

Telltale has started releasing its adventure game series on the Xbox 360, having released Wallace & Gromit in Fright of the Bumblebees and the entire Sam & Max Save the World (aka Sam & Max Season One).

Both games are excellent adventure games, and are virtually unchanged from their PC counterparts, so the content, humor and puzzles remain unchanged – you can read the review of Bumblebees here.

The chief difference between the Xbox 360 and PC versions are twofold: the Xbox 360 version has a different control scheme and Achievements.

Control: The gamepad is far clunkier to use than the keyboard and mouse of the PC. It’s a little wonky in Wallace & Gromit with its 3D movement but downright frustrating in Sam & Max. Wallace requires some almost unintuitive button-jockeying when using items, and it’s harder with the gamepad to get Wallace or Gromit to interact with or pick up the items the players wants. Sam & Max is pure point & click, and endlessly slow with the gamepad.

Achievements: On the other hand, Achievements are very well done in both games. For example, in Wallace there are some easy ones (such as finding the souvenir from A Grand Day Out) and some trickier ones (going Act 1 and 2 without ever picking up the Gorgonzola, or saying “Cracking” three times). Since all games require Leaderboards, it’s interesting to see Telltales’ answer: the amount of unique dialogue spoken, which encourages players to listen to as much of the witty dialogue as possible.

Regardless, both titles are worth having, and are highly recommended. Both receive the score below.