I can’t actually properly remember the last time I played a point-and-click game. Going on fading brain power, my reckoning is that it’s been about 13 years since I last clicked my way around Day Of The Tentacle, which was the last of the LucasArts games that I managed to eagerly pilfer from my brother’s game collection before he moved into his own house.

Thus, it was with mixed feelings that I fired up Culture Shock, the first in six planned Sam and Max episodes from developers Telltale Games, who picked up the comedy duo from the rubbish bin that LucasArts had incredulously chucked them in mere months before the completion of the stillborn Sam and Max: Freelance Police. The entire world and their collective uncle had been trying to tell me for years that the genre of point-and-click was now dead, and despite the brave efforts of Broken Sword to carry the torch nothing was going to bring them back.

Telltale have broken us all back in gently, proving the cynics wrong. Being episodic, each instalment in the series is planned to slot nicely into a smaller, more digestible timeframe, and Culture Shock – weighing in at about 3 hours of play – does that perfectly. Consisting of a selection of relatively simple puzzles, only a few locations and a small cast of supporting characters, the game thankfully sees the freelancing duo back at their offbeat best.

Strange occurrences are happening around town, with Sam and Max receiving a panicked call for help from local shopkeeper Bosco. It turns out that a bunch of former child stars are running around causing havoc, babbling on about special videotapes that change your life. In their usual quirky manner the duo get to the bottom of what’s going on and set about bringing the creator of the tapes to task.

The story itself is simple and relies on classic strange quips between the two unlikely heroes to pad things out. These are a bit more hit-and-miss than some fans of the series would like; some jokes have slightly underwhelming punch lines, whereas some of the weird observations and comments are used a few too many times and become a little stale. That being said, the unique mixture of Sam’s dry wit and Max’s twisted humour still brings up some great moments of comedy that’ll have you chuckling.

The puzzling nature of the game remains mostly faithful to the classic point-and-click method, with the player controlling Sam around the screen whilst hovering the mouse around to see any items or locations he can interact with. Items can be picked up and combined or used on other characters to trigger events and advance the story. The nature of the game means that frustrations do arise, especially when doing something with an item suddenly works when doing exactly the same before a small plot advancement didn’t, but the puzzles are intuitive enough and all make sense in retrospect.

Does it live up to standards? It’s hard to say really, and to be honest the evidence which Culture Shock provides is inconclusive. What you can say, though, is that Telltale have sewn some interesting seeds. It’s early days for the series, and to be honest it’s a joy to have such wonderful characters back on our screens. May the future treat them kindly.