Sam and Max Wii graphics.

[Lagomorph01]

Hi everybody,

 

Let me first point out that I'm a great fan of Sam and Max.

I got introduced to them by Hit the Road and I've been collecting everything from them since.

I was very pleased when I heard about the new series by Telltale games.

 

After getting a couple of episodes for the PC, I heard a Wii version was coming up. I decided to put down my mouse and wait for it, because what could be better then playing a Point Click Adventure on your television screen?

 

Well after months and months of waiting the game finally got released here in the Netherlands. I got it for Sinterklaas (the real Santa Claus) and started playing it immediately.

After Sam said, "Remember our trip to the Moon Max?", I noticed something.

Instead of looking at the funny picture of Sam and Max with paper bags on their heads on the moon. I looked at a pixular blur of colours.

When looking closer at things, I discovered that the textures are of a really low resolution. Not just lowres, but like Playstation one res...

 

I just have to look at Peepers blurry eyes or Sybil's pixular fire curtains and I just loose all the fun of playing the game.

Why was this decision made? Why are all the textures so low res?

Even Sam's tie, hat and buttons look blurry...

I've seen much better graphics on the Wii, and the PC version looks great.

Why did they do this?!?

 

I'm just very dissapointed...

[Samnmax221]

It's a Wii, what were you expecting?

[Lagomorph01]

I'm not expecting X-box 360 graphics, nor do I expect Sam or Max to have fur or clothing systems ingame.

I'd just like the game to have some decent high resolution textures.

If they could do it with Super Mario and Zelda titles in much bigger worlds, they can do it with this game.

[SyntheticGerbil]

Well I haven't personally seen it, you'd be better off telling someone at Telltale, but there could be many reasons. I don't know off the top of my head how much space the PC version of Season 1 takes up and whether or not it's on a regular or dual layer DVD, but the Wii would be using the same amount of space.

 

Maybe the way the engine on Wii interacts lead to an increase in audio or video size, and therefore an easy way to save space is to resave all the textures in a lower resolution. Again I can't confirm whether the textures it looks really blurry or blocky since I haven't seen it on Wii, and the difference could just come from seeing it on a bigger screen. I don't know. They may have not resaved or resampled the textures at all.

 

I don't work there, so I can't offer you a good answer. If you complain on the Telltale board, even though that's sort of tacky, they can't fix your game but they can probably give you a good reason.

[Shmargin]

The reason is pretty simply really, youre playing a port.

 

In other words, they basically took a game, that on the PC runs at a max of (and I could be a little off) 1280x1024, and ported it to another system.

 

In this case youre playing it on the Wii, which has a max resolution of 640x480, in other words, half the resolution. Unless the graphics are hand crafted for that resolution, everythings going to look blurry and smashed, because you just took all the crap from a 10 pound crap bag, and put it in a 5 pound crap bag.

 

Pick your mouse back up, and save the Wii version for when your showing off next time your friends pull out their iPhones to try to show off why they think games with no buttons rock.

[SyntheticGerbil]

Well if anything I would think blurry textures would be less noticeable at a smaller resolution, as you will have less pixels to deal with. I guess it depends on what resolution the textures were made to run on, but that all just kind of depends what will be in the foreground and background, and which characters are important or not.

 

Most Wii games look fine as is, so I really doubt it's so much of a TV resolution problem. You also sit further from a TV than you would a computer screen, so all of those can impact perception of quality. But the bottom line is, if in fact the textures were all resaved at a lower resolution to save space, it will be noticeable anywhere.

[Udvarnoky]

I was a little disappointed by the port. I realize that the Wii is a Wii, but the games were pretty low-end PC games. I just thought the translation would be smoother. And in addition to the game basically looking like the PC version on the lowest graphical setting, it's a bit choppy and there are lines that occasionally get cut out. I'm also not sure why for the later episodes the title simply doesn't show up, or why in Culture Shock the supposed Boston Baked Beans gumball machine looks like it just has regular gumballs in it, but for all the other episodes it has the right contents. Overall though the port is solid and never crashed on me or anything like that. I imagine, being that I know nothing about the processes behind porting a game, that they did the best they could with it, and it is damn satisfying to play a Sam & Max game with your Wiimote on the couch. I would just only recommend it to people who don't have the PC option (which is unlikely considering most PCs ought to be able to run these games). I'm one of those people who was always going to get Sam & Max Wii no matter what, because buying everything Sam & Max is how I roll. It'll be interesting to see how the Season 2 port fares. Maybe they'll be able to improve it, but on the other hand the Season 2 episodes might have some slightly more sophisticated effects going on.