Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

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.