Adventure games have always been a haven for players wanting to avoid the more frenetic pace of side-scrollers, platformers, and first-person shooters. A lot of folks take this to mean that adventure games are also dull. Whatever else you may be able to say about the adventures from TellTaleGames.com, they’re never dull. Occasionally irritating? Sure. Silly? Frequently. Laugh-out-loud funny? Consistently.

Working in a TV-like season-and-episode format, TellTaleGames.com spreads the fun over a period of months. Their first season of Sam & Max gives a good taste of the humorous adventure format.

The characters of Sam & Max have been around since indie comic artist Steve Purcell created them in 1987. Sam is a six-foot, loquacious, anthropomorphic dog with a drawling voice and a pistol with a sewer-pipe barrel. He is perpetually dressed in a baggy suit and fedora; the very image of a canine Sam Spade. Max is a manic "rabbity thing" given to the liberal application of mayhem and violence in pursuit of justice (or, barring that, just a good time).

In their twenty-year lifespan, Sam & Max have appeared in various forms; comic books, LucasArts adventures, a Saturday-morning cartoon show, and an award-winning web comic. TellTalesGames.com has drawn upon all of these influences in reviving the franchise.

The game play is pretty standard point-and-click stuff. Clicking on ... ummm ... people (who may actually be animals) ... initiates a dialog trees. Clicking items pulls them into your inventory. Inventory items can be used on other items to advance the story.

The puzzles are occasionally frustrating, but never for very long. The characters are pretty good about giving you hints on how to proceed and a careful review of the environment is usually enough to get you past any sticking points.

For example, the first puzzle involves retrieving the telephone from a rat hole ... literally. Sam & Max’s office has a resident rodent who makes off with the phone. He promises to return it in exchange for a quantity of Swiss cheese. Max has recently purchased cheese, but it’s not Swiss. Sam unloads his pocket howitzer into the cheese (creating plenty of holes) and declares it good enough.

This kind of comic havoc is a constant in the game. From beaning former child pop stars with bowling balls (and, be honest, haven’t you always really wanted to do that?) to shooting out the taillights of passing motorists so you can shake them down with a ticket; you’ll find that Sam & Max aren’t so much in the business of enforcing the law as they are in the business of breaking just a bit less than everyone else.

Which is why the game is so fun to play. The violence is on the level of a Bugs Bunny cartoon and the sly jokes about pop culture come thick and fast. There is some very mild language and some parents may object to the content for their younger children.

Note: At the time of this writing, Sam & Max is only available for the PC. However, a Wii version (on disk) has been announced and will be on sale in the Fall of ‘08.