We’ve seen and played with some interesting concepts in VR, but there’s always something new. In this case: Sam&Max – This Time It’s Virtual. Porting point and click adventures to VR seemed like a strange concept to me, so I was interested. You can read how I liked it here.

Let’s first come to what I think is the most important question: how do you port a genre that is practically made for 2D gameplay into the 3D world, or even VR? And by that I don’t mean 3D graphics – you’re still clicking on a two-dimensional plane. I mean real 3D, with depths.

The answer is as simple as it may be disappointing – not at all. Quite apart from the fact that I could also just show a virtual desktop in VR and play classic P&C games on it, it just doesn’t make sense across the board – so it wasn’t even tried. Instead, we’re offered a “normal” VR game in which we’ll walk around the world solving puzzles, all with Sam and Max at our side, the two main characters from the original game series.

I have to mention that I haven’t played the original one – but I definitely plan to. Basically, I think that the classic games could convince me. As you might have guessed, the VR implementation couldn’t do it.

My first criticism relates to the story, but only indirectly. It’s difficult to pack a good story into VR, because as a player you can very quickly become distracted by the many visual impressions. Games like “The Last Clockwinder” definitely did that, but it doesn’t seem all that easy to me. That’s why I don’t want to directly criticize a sub-complex story here.

My criticism is more about what you have to do in relation to the story. The idea is very simple: you should complete a training course in an abandoned amusement park that the two of them have converted in order to become part of their detective agency. However, after three of a total of nine tests that you have to pass, you are called to a real case – this essentially summarizes the three previously learned “lessons”.

There is a kind of main story running through the game that I can’t or don’t want to explain here. In short, after passing the last test, there is a longer boss fight that combines all the elements you have learned before. We win, everyone is happy.

Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of repetition. Not only the lessons in the smaller and the big boss fights, but also the lessons themselves – for example, there were several where you only had to climb in VR or shimmy along. I’m aware that movement in VR is limited since you’re locked into real physics; yet it felt like a waste of time after a while. And the quite funny ideas of the intermediate fights were somewhat neglected.

So overall the game felt more like a tech demo to me. You spent most of the time learning what to do in VR, so the amusement park setting was a pretty good fit. However, that and the sparse story is not enough for me.

Let’s come to another point that really annoyed me: the talking. In every situation, Sam and Max are with us. The two actually serve no real purpose other than to comment on what we’re doing, and very wordy at that. I’m sure that would work very well in a P&C game – this genre thrives on having funny answers or dialogue on command.

The keyword, however, is: on command. Because in VR it’s just annoying when you can’t walk two steps without hearing a funny saying or a pseudo-profound socially critical statement. That honestly spoiled the whole game for me; apart from the many repetitions of dialogues.

There were also minor technical errors, but I don’t want to go into detail about them. Twice we had to restart the game because it hung or we were in a situation where an item we needed disappeared. Annoying, but not too bad for me. What was really annoying though was the completely broken teleport mechanic – didn’t work, motion sickness kicked in.

So overall I can’t recommend the game. It wasn’t too expensive at around 20 euros, but the game just doesn’t work as an overall concept for the reasons mentioned above. As a P&C adventure, on the other hand, I can imagine it very well – we will definitely try the older parts.

How did you like the game? Do you understand my criticism, do you see it completely differently or do you have other points that should be mentioned? Feel free to discuss it with me on Discord!