For once, I managed to actually play a Sam & Max episode just as it came out, and this one (“Chariot of the Dogs”) turned out to be pretty good.

Bosco had gone missing at the end of the previous one, so it was time to track him down, after an introductory bit where we finally got to see inside his store’s bathroom. We were soon abducted by aliens, where we discovered Bosco had been turned into a cow. Fixing him up required a whole bunch of time-travel to previous locations, putting twists on them like meeting both younger and older versions of ourselves, Bosco’s mom (whom we had to unseduce), an abusive computer, and multiple Superballs.

After returning Bosco to normal, the aliens were revealed and were…not quite what you’d expect. After a few more puzzles, involving meeting ourselves again (with a nice in-joke in that the other pair were acting like they were in adventure game, occasionally saying things like “I can’t use those together…”) and traveling to the beginning of the universe, we got rid of the ‘alien’ crew, accidentally destroyed the ship, and fled to…I’m not sure, because it was left there as a cliffhanger ending.

There were some good chuckles, and the puzzles this time were pretty reasonable. There was only one near the end that I had any real trouble with (getting the recording contract), but overall it was a really good episode. The only unusual bits were that there was no driving or minigames at all involving the Desoto, for the first time in the series, and Sybil didn’t make an appearance.

Sam & Max: The Next Generation: