Two more games in the bag.

Sam & Max Season 1 Episode 1 is done and done. Not quite all it was cracked up to be.

Maybe it was because I never played the original Sam & Max games... maybe it was because I had played Telltale's later games and expected more refinement... but Sam & Max Episode 1 did not go down as well as I thought it would.

The story is cute, quick, and full of good random humor. The characters and locales are memorable. But what sticks out like a sore thumb is all of the back and forth. It seemed that Telltale limited the locations you can visit to a small handful of places in order to speed development along on these episodic games. Fine. But you're not really dragging out the story by having me go from place A to B, then to C, back to A, then to C, then B again, etc. Hopefully the later installments iron out those issues.

Still, I bought the entire first season during a STEAM sale, so I'm definitely going to give them a try.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky is done. GREAT game. Review below

The developers of STALKER Clear Sky took everything that was learned from the first and did their best to improve it. They succeeded in some areas and failed in others.

One major success in this game was the connection between it and the original STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl. Upon liberating an army base for a faction, I now understood why that faction occupied a seemingly out in the middle of nowhere base in the original. Imagine that; a prequel that explains the original. Still, being able to witness all of the tie-ins was a fun connection.

The firefights seemed to be toned down a bit from the first one. While I was not used to the enemies hurling grenades at you with pin-point accuracy, the battles definitely seemed easier to accomplish.

I also loved the new artifact-finding. No longer were they just out in the open, ready to be picked up. No, you had to get a good detector and manually track them down through anomalies.

I didn't like the ability to see an enemy on my radar from a mile away... literally. I'm guessing that this is one of the refinements made to hopefully bring in the more casual crowd in that the feature makes the game easier. Then again, I can't see the casual crowd gravitating towards any of the STALKER games in the first place.

Overall, this was an improvement on the original, and I hope Call of Pripryat continues in this direction.