They’ve only had a few months off, but evil waits for no vacation to finish. Sam & Max are back for another season of insanity! Ice Station Santa is the premier episode of the second season of 4cr-favorite Sam & Max. Does it live up to the first season? Is Max still a psychopath? Has Sybil finally settled on a job?

Keep on reading, little buddy.

When a giant wind-up robot attacks the neighborhood, the freelance police leap into action. Turns out, the robot was an early gift from Santa. Wait, why would Santa send an evil pop-addicted robot? It seems that the jolly old saint has become a little more.. satanic. It’s up to the crime-fighting duo to remove the demon and save Christmas.

Ice Station Santa is every bit as hilarious as its predecessors. The writing is still the sharpest in the business, brilliantly parodying everything from A Christmas Carol to modern politics. It’s noir satire at its finest. There are even a few touching moments, courtesy of Jimmy Two-Teeth’s family.

The voice acting and music do an impressive job of presenting the script to the player. Seriously, the voice acting is perfect. These guys do a stellar job at delivering each line. Likewise, the music does a fine job of setting the mood. I totally dug the jazzy noir remixes of old Christmas tunes, and the “Friendly Demon” song had me in stitches.

The graphics and interface are pretty much identical to those of the previous episodes. There have been a few welcome upgrades to the engine, like widescreen support. The game opens up with an interactive segment designed to set up the game for best performance on your computer. It’s a pretty cool touch that other games would do well to copy. If you get stuck, there is now an optional hints toggle. You can adjust it on the fly in case you get stuck and need some help. It actually does a good job of not spoiling the puzzles for you while still pointing you in the right direction. I didn’t actually notice the “Pimp le Car” shop past Stinky’s Diner until Max shouted at me about it.

Although Telltale hasn’t kicked up the difficulty level, it is obvious that thought was put into the puzzles. There is a particularly cool multi-part puzzle in Santa’s workshop towards the end of the game. Telltale also added a few minigames to fix the complaints about lack of gameplay variety. I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say that you won’t just be driving this time.

As this is part of an episodic series, don’t expect more than a few hours of play out of it. However, at $8.95, you get an extremely solid evening of entertainment. The new season of Sam & Max promises tons of laughs and a creative adventure experience. If you have any appreciation for the genre, you need to pick up this game.

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Sam & Max: Ice Station Santa will be available on GameTap on November 8, 2007. It will appear for sale on Telltale’s website the next day. Each episode will retail for $8.95 or $34.95 for the entire season.