Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

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.