Somewhat lost in the melange, season 2 of Telltale’s Sam & Max episodes launched yesterday. I’m currently a fair way into the first installment, Ice Station Santa, which is proving as entertaining as ever. Within minutes I was facing off with a giant, cheesy pop-song quoting robot, before driving off to the North Pole to investigate an unusually murderous Santa Claus. Excellent.

Some critics took issue with the length and relative simplicity of most of the first series, but personally I think a lot of people really missed the point. Each episode lasted only a few hours, and its puzzles were rarely tough enough to keep most people stuck for long. In short, they actually worked as episodes, each with a self-contained plot building up season-long arc. It was by far the best attempt at episodic gaming I’ve seen, and it looks like season 2 could easily repeat its success.

Oh yes, there’s a demo too. It can be downloaded from Telltale’s blog, while everything else can be found on their Sam & Max page.

If all that wasn’t good enough, you can now download an entire episode from the first season for the princely sum of £0.00, with the help of Steam. It’s my personal favourite as well, so thanks, Telltale.

Thelltale.