I won't pretend that it was an everyday occurrence, but every time Pajama Sam or Humongous Entertainment games got brought up, I would often wonder... "Why *havent* they made more Pajama Sam games?"

You see, I only played the first 3 games as a kid, I never got around to Life is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff.

The title is so ironic to me, because this game really lost almost everything that I'm sure I and a bunch of other people used to love about the PJS games as a kid.

It looks like Sam, sure, but it doesn't sound like Sam (or even particularly good for that matter) and it damn well doesn't play like Sam.

As I'm writing this, I just streamed myself playing through the 4 mainline titles of PJS as a "Pajama Sam-o-rama" and boy howdy was it jarring going from the first 3 to this one. My playtime reveals it, but I didn't finish this game, as a matter of fact I chose to stop out of annoyance because everything that was so enjoyable when I was a kid (and still pretty enjoyable now that I'm 25) is just gone here.

The first and most obvious loss is of Sam's voice actress. The new VA not only sounds nothing like that raspy scared kid we knew, but its barely passable at that. Changing VAs is never a good idea, and whatever circumstances led up to the swap aside, what IS here isn't great. It doesn't help that the lines are garbage.

Which brings me to the next and more important change. Writing.

The lead writer for PJS changed from the other titles to this one, and from the moment you boot up the game you can tell. A lot of the other reviews here can't seem to put their finger on what exactly is 'off' about this game, and I can emphatically say that its the writing.

In PJS 1, 2 and 3 there was this great tongue in cheek writing that was neither pandering nor condescending. Kids, despite how dumb they can be at times, are pretty smart and the writing in the early PJS games reflected that. There was also a lot of jokes thrown in there for the parents that were in the room while their kids played the games. The hippie carrot revolutionaries, the IRS taking all your money, customs inspections stealing all your stuff. The writing in the first 3 games holds up astonishingly well today, it got some good belly laughs out of me and I wasn't expecting it to be so up to snuff even in 2024.

If the first 3 games and other titles written by Dave Grossman (would it surprise you to learn he worked on Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle?) were written in a way that anyone can enjoy, PJS 4 is written as if its babys first video game. The characters don't make any sense, like... at all.

"They call me the happy farmer." says the giant green rectangle thing. Its wild to me, but the fact that the characters that were all related to the theme of the game with pun names added a lot. This is just generic slop.

The cards you collect are also generic slop, and theres a lot of slop. One in practically every room in the game, in fact. There's so little care here to preserve the core of what made a generation of kids love these games and it frustrates me to no end that such a fantastic franchise was murdered. I'm sure the drop off a cliff in adventure game sales didn't help PJS's decline, but an absolute dumpster fire in shiny paint sure didn't help either.

Also since you're reading this on Steam I should mention that the port of this game is also garbage. The first 3 games use an Amiga emulator that runs fine on modern hardware, for PJS4 you have to download a program to fake having a DVD drive for the game to even open. What a joke.

Go play PJS 1, 2 and 3, they hold up great. This? No thanks.

I won't pretend that it was an everyday occurrence, but every time Pajama Sam or Humongous Entertainment games got brought up, I would often wonder... "Why *havent* they made more Pajama Sam games?" You see, I only played the first 3 games as a kid, I never got around to Life is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff. The title is so ironic to me, because this game really lost almost everything that I'm sure I and a bunch of other people used to love about the PJS games as a kid. It looks like Sam, sure, but it doesn't sound like Sam (or even particularly good for that matter) and it damn well doesn't play like Sam. As I'm writing this, I just streamed myself playing through the 4 mainline titles of PJS as a "Pajama Sam-o-rama" and boy howdy was it jarring going from the first 3 to this one. My playtime reveals it, but I didn't finish this game, as a matter of fact I chose to stop out of annoyance because everything that was so enjoyable when I was a kid (and still pretty enjoyable now that I'm 25) is just gone here. The first and most obvious loss is of Sam's voice actress. The new VA not only sounds nothing like that raspy scared kid we knew, but its barely passable at that. Changing VAs is never a good idea, and whatever circumstances led up to the swap aside, what IS here isn't great. It doesn't help that the lines are garbage. Which brings me to the next and more important change. Writing. The lead writer for PJS changed from the other titles to this one, and from the moment you boot up the game you can tell. A lot of the other reviews here can't seem to put their finger on what exactly is 'off' about this game, and I can emphatically say that its the writing. In PJS 1, 2 and 3 there was this great tongue in cheek writing that was neither pandering nor condescending. Kids, despite how dumb they can be at times, are pretty smart and the writing in the early PJS games reflected that. There was also a lot of jokes thrown in there for the parents that were in the room while their kids played the games. The hippie carrot revolutionaries, the IRS taking all your money, customs inspections stealing all your stuff. The writing in the first 3 games holds up astonishingly well today, it got some good belly laughs out of me and I wasn't expecting it to be so up to snuff even in 2024. If the first 3 games and other titles written by Dave Grossman (would it surprise you to learn he worked on Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle?) were written in a way that anyone can enjoy, PJS 4 is written as if its babys first video game. The characters don't make any sense, like... at all. "They call me the happy farmer." says the giant green rectangle thing. Its wild to me, but the fact that the characters that were all related to the theme of the game with pun names added a lot. This is just generic slop. The cards you collect are also generic slop, and theres a lot of slop. One in practically every room in the game, in fact. There's so little care here to preserve the core of what made a generation of kids love these games and it frustrates me to no end that such a fantastic franchise was murdered. I'm sure the drop off a cliff in adventure game sales didn't help PJS's decline, but an absolute dumpster fire in shiny paint sure didn't help either. Also since you're reading this on Steam I should mention that the port of this game is also garbage. The first 3 games use an Amiga emulator that runs fine on modern hardware, for PJS4 you have to download a program to fake having a DVD drive for the game to even open. What a joke. Go play PJS 1, 2 and 3, they hold up great. This? No thanks. [code] https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42143664/ [/code]