Oh boy, Christmas sure came early this year. And what better way to celebrate the holiday cheer than by having our favorite canine and lagomorph duo deliver their unique brand of esoteric “justice” to dear ol’ Saint Nick? With Ice Station Zebra, I mean.. Ice Station Santa starting off the second season of the Sam & Max episodic adventures, the homicidal, psychopathic “freelance police” set out to stop Santa Claus, who seems to have become a flesh-and-blood version of the evil Robot Santa from Futurama, sending giant battle robots after our heroes and taking a tommy gun to everything in sight.

But obviously, things aren’t always what they seem and Dog Face and Hyperkinetic Rabbity Thing set out on yet another crazy adventure, filled with frenzied gameplay, hilarious gags and characters straight out of a psych ward.

Designed to keep you occupied for the better part of 2 hours, Ice Station Santa throws in a ton of great new puzzles that will leave you scratching your noggin’ as you figure out the obvious, along with a unhealthy overdose of references – everything from Season 01 to Sesame Street, YouTube, MySpace and Star Trek. Sure, it gets you a lot more laughs if you’ve played through Season 01, but like every other episode, it manages to stand completely on its own, so even newcomers won’t feel left out of the irreverently violent humor. Heck, the duo even manage to throw in sharp jabs at the political scene even as they deliver cringingly painful sexual humor in the same breath. But that’s being obvious.

A lot’s changed with Ice Station Santa, though. From the new activation system (one that thankfully relies on a TellTale account), the helpful game setup (courtesy the endearingly pathetic C.O.P.S.), opening credits that you can blow to kingdom come, a help system that offers varying levels of hints, to changes in the gameplay have all been fine tuned to make Ice Station Santa a lot more fun than its predecessors. Players can now make Sam and Max run or walk faster with a double click, in addition to using the keyboard to control some of the minigames, which range from running over Tickle Me Elmo, err, Elmer dolls (disturbingly hilarious) to boxing Jimmy Two Teeth for a crack at winning a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse action figure!

And that, dear friends, is where the sheer magic of Sam & Max lies. There are no cheap-and-mean jokes on the shallowness that’s being perpetuated as Christmas these days – no obvious jabs at Hallmark or the candy companies or the billion and one “shambling corporate presences” that stand to gain a billion dollars – but a sharp parody of Christmas that, like A Christmas Carol, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! or Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire before it, actually brings out the true meaning of the holiday. Except that it does it with zany humor peppered gratuitously with gunfire. Or as Max puts it so eloquently, “We come bearing good cheer and high powered pistols!”

And what’s Sam & Max without their demented friends and enemies? Joining the regular cast this season are Flint Paper (from Monkeys Violating the Heavenly Temple), the P.I. who prefers to beat the information out of his hapless victims; Stinky, the grinch at Stinky’s diner that loves spining tales of canoodling with George Clooney and Barack Obama; Jimmy’s wife Mary and their son Timmy, who has “terminal Tourette’s Syndrome.” And yes, we’d love to see the Maimtron-9000 return, destroying everything around it while blissfully quoting Michael Jackson, Bangles and Culture Club numbers.

Most of Ice Station Santa though, like Culture Shock, is a set up to events that will probably unfold across the remainder of the season. Which explains the lackluster presence of the older characters, whose appeal seems to be wasted in this episode. Obviously, it’s no fun if Sybil doesn’t get a new job or Bosco doesn’t sell any of his trusty, ridiculously overpriced doohickeys. With great music (again) by Jared Emerson-Johnson, splendid voice acting and a host of shiny new eye-candy upgrades, Ice Station Santa proves a great start to what we hope will be a never ending series of hilarious hijinks.

Rating: 8.5 / 10

Screenshots:

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• Dev Kanchen Says:
  Monday, November 12th, 2007 08:36 pm GMT +5.5 at 8:36 pm

  Hyuck! I say ‘Yes’, my wallet says ‘No’.

• Felix Tito Trinidad Says:
  Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 03:11 am GMT +5.5 at 3:11 am

  What’s up?. Thanks for the blog. I’ve been digging around for info, but i think i’m getting lost!. Yahoo lead me here – good for you i suppose! Keep up the good work. I will be popping back over in a couple of days to see if there is updated posts.