Technical Difficulties

I bought Sam & Max for the Wii. It came through the mail yesterday, so when I got it I settled down for a pleasant evenings pointing & clicking. I mean, I'd really enjoyed Secret Files Tunguska, and this is like a proper franchise from the P.C. It's bound to be even better right?

Well.... Not exactly. I've only played it for an evening, and to be fair half of that was wandering around trying to work out what to do until I finally noticed the obvious item I'd missed, so I can't really review the game properly. So far it's quite funny, fairly clicky and rather pointy, all well and good. What I feel compelled to discuss are the technical issues.

Now, some of this has been mentioned in the reviews I didn't read before buying the game, and mostly function as a minor inconvenience (with one rather notable exception).

Graphically there are some glitches around. I've seen framerate issues mentioned, which seems about right. Although there was one dialogue scene where the characters weren't rendered AT ALL.

The sound often cuts off the last beat of a line of dialogue, which while not terminal is rather odd and get's quite annoying. Doesn't always do it mind you. Just enough so you can't help but notice.

Response can be a little funny on occasion, most notably for me when you click on something you're right next to and the character walks away and realigns themselves, ending up in basically the same position.

However the most notable problem was one I didn't see mentioned in any reviews. Simply that the game KILLED MY SYTEM ENTIRELY. TWICE.

First time through I'm pottering through, I complete a bit in one location and go to leave. I walk out the door... And everything freezes. The game starts emiting a disturbing tone, pitched about "you're fucked now" level. It's crashed. However it's crashed so hard it's taken the Wii with it. Nothing responds. Can't power off, can't eject, can't restart. Had to yank the power in the end.

Now, I should of course note that after plugging the power back in everything worked again and I was able to continue. Though I made damn sure to save a lot more often.

But that is hardly the point. What is actually shocking is that a game this buggy is available on a console. I mean, I may expect some problems from some old/cheap/free piece of software on the P.C. You have a lot more potential for thing to get buggy on a variable platform like that. But are you honestly telling me that this went through testing and they just said "meh, whatever"? This is, put simply, not good enough. This is, when you come down to it, BETA.

Which is a real shame. Because I really WANT to like this game. It seems like it's gonna be quite fun. But with these ridiculous niggly problems always ticking away in the background (and on occasion destroying everything you've just spent the last hour and half doing) There's no way I can, in all good concience, recommend this. There is simply no excuse for these bugs to exist.

Now, I'm gonna keep playing, and who knows? Things may improve. But on first impressions this really is not a good start.