Sam & Max’s first season continues with Episode 5: Reality 2.0. You can certainly start your Sam & Max experience with Episode 5, but if you skipped the prior four episodes you’re going to miss out on some of the jokes in the game. If you’ve stuck with the series through all of the previous episodes, then you’ll be happy to hear that Episode 5 may well be the best episode in the series.

Hypnosis once again figures prominently in the storyline, this time delivered through a virtual reality internet game called Reality 2.0. When people put on the goggles needed to access the game, they get hypnotized into spending all of their time online playing the game. Luckily Sam and Max are immune to hypnosis and they enter Reality 2.0 to see who is behind this latest hypnotic scheme and to put an end to their plans.

One of the first things you’ll notice about Reality 2.0 is that new lines have been recorded for most of the objects in the game. In prior episodes the recycled jokes began to get a little old, and it became tiresome to listen to the same jokes all over again while trying to see if anything had been changed that was pertinent to the new story. A lot of these objects are still not pertinent to the story of course, but you’ll get to laugh at some new jokes this time out.

Once you enter Reality 2.0 things get really interesting as you have a virtual version of Sam and Max’s neighborhood to explore. This essentially gives you twice as many locations to explore as each has both a real-world and a virtual reality version. Seeing what Bosco and Sybil are up to in each episode is always fun, but this time out you get to do that twice. Many of the game’s puzzles will require you to use objects from both versions of the locations. The puzzles are not all that difficult, but they’re all pretty clever and enjoyable enough to solve. The biggest disappointment with Reality 2.0 is that it’s too short. Right when it’s hitting its stride, it’s over. This is primarily due to the episodic nature of the series, but a complete game built around the Reality 2.0 concept would probably be pretty cool.

If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how the series developed before committing to it, then Reality 2.0 should be enough to convince you to go for it at this point. I wouldn’t recommend simply picking things up at Episode 5, as the sum of the parts definitely makes for a better overall experience than if you took any episode on its own. And if you’ve played the first four episodes, what are you waiting for?

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 88%. Reality 2.0 is worth taking a break from your own reality to enjoy.