Sometimes a man just has to cry! The anguish is just too much, the torment insurmountable! It’s almost too much to bear! The pain of what, you ask? The wait for new episodes of my favorite series, gaming or television, of course. Well, I should say, the wait for everything except the newest Sam & Max episodes. Here we are in the second full week of February, and like clockwork, the latest episode of Telltale’s Sam & Max series has arrived in our laps.

Speaking of monthly, man, those guys at Telltale know how to keep a schedule. I’m honestly not sure that they sleep. Perhaps this episode’s antagonist is a hint that they are actually zombies under the thrall of an immortal master. How they manage to get these episodes out at such a strict rate is just beyond me. Sure, the engine is in place and each episode does have its fair share of reused art assets, but that still doesn’t paint the whole picture. The voice actors alone must be signed on at a full time basis. Seriously, Valve, 2009? Telltale delivers new episodes monthly. What’s your excuse?

Alright, alright, I’ve gone off on a tangent. Where was I? Right, I’m supposed to review the latest episode of our favorite PC adventure sitcom. Night of the Raving Dead tackles a subject near and dear to my angst-ridden (ridden, I say) writer heart – emo. There are zombies, too. Actually, I think they might be ravers. Alright, I admit, I don’t really know the difference between the two. They both shamble around dark rooms, drool over brains, and smell like corpses. Anyways, emo. No, Sam hasn’t swapped his fedora for his mom’s eyeshadow and his sister’s jeans. Instead, it’s the eurotrash vampire overlord of Struttgart who is causing trouble for the un-undead citizens of the world.

Half of the fun in each episode is clicking on every object just to hear the witty one-liners and pick up on the myriad pop-culture references. Some are obvious, George Romero’s portrait appears on the celebrity wall at Stinky’s restaurant. Others are slightly more subtle, like the Best in Show reference during the awesome “emo rap” sequence. I’m a huge zombie fanatic, and even I can admit that zombie (and vampire) humor has pretty much been run into the ground. Still, Telltale’s writers have come up with the freshest humor about the rotting dead that I’ve heard in some time.

This episode is utterly hilarious from start to finish, which is important as the puzzles aren’t quite as well-balanced as usual. Perhaps I was spoiled by the last episode, but I was expecting a little more out of the developers. A good portion of the puzzles just seemed blatantly obvious. The horror setting worked against Telltale. It is pretty obvious what a sunlamp or a pack of garlic clove cigarettes will be used for. However, a few of the other puzzles had me downright stumped. In those situations, I was pretty thankful for the hint system. Sometimes it’s nice to have Max tell you that you’re not even in the right location. There were still moments of utter cleverness, but the balance found in the last couple of episodes was a little askew this time around.

We’re now smack-dab in the middle of the season, so if you’re not on board by this point, Night of the Raving Dead isn’t going to be the one to pull you in. Still, it’s another fine example of Telltale’s brilliant writing and voice acting. It is, without a doubt, the funniest episode of the season thus far. I still have to knock it down a little for the uneven puzzles. If you’re already a subscriber, you won’t be disappointed. If you’re new to the series, go to Telltale’s site for a free copy of Abe Lincoln Must Die, one of the funniest episodes of the first season. You might just become hooked.

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