Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

spoilers!!!



f*ck you telltale for actually making me cry @ a sam & max game. i finished this over a month ago and the ending still haunts me. this game burned down my crops, killed my family and stole my wife. anyway 4.5 stars this game slaps and has no right to be as emotional as it is. i would give it 5 stars but there were some parts that felt kind "eh" to me. still an amazing game and i wish sam & max well on their 10th marriage

The ending is dark as fuck but what am I to expect from a game where Max got lobotomized by an evil space monkey so Sam turned into a hardcore gritty detective beating info out of people, and while on his quest to get Max's brain back he accidentally brings back an ancient Egyptian king who bends reality to make everyone on earth serve him and praise him.

Adventure games like this live and die by their puzzles. If a puzzle is annoying or makes you Google the solution and say "how the fuck was I ever supposed to think of that?", it's simply a black mark on the game.
Telltale Games's games were always episodic, which made it easy to talk about which parts of their games were bad. Episode two of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, Moai Better Blues, was absolutely abysmal, but the rest of the game made up for it. The Devil's Playhouse, however, has three bad episodes of its five. There's also an annoying, pretentious narrator at the beginning and end of each episode.

The game begins with the first bad episode, The Penal Zone. I played this episode back in 2016, and didn't pick the game back up until this year (2019). So while I may not remember much about it, the fact that I did not want to pick the game back up after this says a lot about it.

Episode two, The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, is one of the best episodes of Telltale's Sam and Max games. Sam and Max find a projector and four film reels, showing various points of their ancestors' greatest adventure. The fourth reel has to be done last, but the other three are all able to be started immediately. You need to switch between reels, using information from each reel in the other reels to proceed. For example, in order to start reel two, you need information from reel three. However, you won't be able to access required dialogue options in reel three about a certain character until you meet him in reel two. This makes for fun puzzles, and the early 20th century setting is fun and unique.
Episode three, They Stole Max's Brain, is the other good episode. Its puzzles are the best in the game. In my case, at least, I had several satisfying "OH" moments where I figured out what I need to do to progress.

Episode four, Beyond the Alley of the Dolls, is a mess. It starts out well; the scenes in Stinky's diner and during the seance are fun and the sort of thing I wanted in this game. After that, however, is a trial and error dial puzzle. I didn't miss anything; it's just pure trial and error, and the dial sequence is randomised every playthrough. In addition, the twist ending is very stupid. I hated this episode.
Episode five, The City That Dares Not Sleep, exists. I was pretty checked out after episode four, and almost just dropped the game when I reached the treadmill puzzle. Sybil refuses to allow Sam to run the treadmill, insisting she can do it herself and she don't need no man to do it for her, but refuses to do it when Sam asks her to. It's an annoying joke that's been done to death. It was a simple puzzle, but at that point, I was only playing the game to be done with it.

Even though this is the third season of Telltales' Sam & Max, there is no requirement to play the previous instalments. There are returning characters, so you may miss a few jokes here and there, but The Devil's Playhouse can easily be enjoyed without any prior knowledge at all. All you need to know is that Sam & Max are freelance police and end up in all sorts of crazy adventures.

The first episode (The Penal Zone) gets the season off to a great start. An evil space-ape, General Skunk'ape has landed on earth, searching for the mystical Toys of Power. Straight away you are thrown into the action and are introduced to Max's new-found psychic powers. It's a really well- written episode and gives you a good insight into what's in store for the subsequent episodes. Max's main psychic power is Future Vision which can be used on a character to give you a couple of seconds of a future scene. Sometimes it can be used as a hint system, but often plays a vital role in actually knowing what to do. Due to the brevity of the vision, you may only know the end result, but don't know the sequence of steps leading up to it. It's an interesting mechanic and works well. There's also plenty of times when it is just used for a gag rather than having an affect on the story. Another power used frequently throughout the game is teleportation. Max can teleport the freelance police to any phone which Max knows the number of. Usually, you can teleport to each distinct area, and sometimes you can teleport to a particular person who will be vital in that chapter.

In episode two (The Tomb of Sammun-Mak), another interesting mechanic is used. Max uses his power of 'astral-projection' for the freelance police to view the history of their great-grandfathers; Sameth and Maximus. You have a series of film reels, which you can choose in any order. In order to progress in certain parts, you require knowledge of a certain topic. This means that you end up jumping about through time to acquire information so that you can progress in the past/future. Max also makes use of a ventriloquist dummy, Charlie Ho-Tep that impersonates the subject's voice, often tricking nearby characters, or just merely providing gags.

Episode 3 (They Stole Max's Brain!)'s first act is based on film noire movies. Here, Sam has to interrogate suspects and press them for more information, playing a good-cop-bad-cop routine. Once you manage to get your required information, the game returns to the usual game-play style. It's a brief detour, but a good one while it lasts. The rest of the episode is good, although it can get a bit silly.

In episode four (Beyond the Alley of the Dolls), Sam & Max have to deal with a large amount of Sam clones who are seeking the Toys of Power. It initially takes its inspiration from zombie stories, but becomes more of a sci-fi affair as it progresses. The story is a great penultimate episode, given that it still has a lot of mystery, with Sam eager to find the villain responsible for the clones and obviously ends up having a crazy conclusion.

Episode 5 (The City That Dares Not Sleep) is shorter than the others. It feels very stripped down with less variation of locales, simpler puzzles, with some sections feeling a bit lazy and somewhat tedious. Although the whole game is a bit silly, the other episodes were interesting and had some great ideas. This one just didn't cut it for me, and was a terrible finale for the game.

The puzzles in Sam & Max are generally easy, and are much more straight-forward than a lot of other adventure games. It's not a boring game though, because the dialog really drives the game. Each episode can be enjoyed as separate stories, but together they form a larger story. This also means that even though the last episode was a disappointment, it doesn't actually ruin the story or game.