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Write-Up:
Well it’s that time of the month again, time for a quick review of the latest episode of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse. Recall that the entire season including all 5 monthly episodes can be purchased for around $35 from Telltale.com, Steam, or on the Playstation Network for the PC, Mac, Playstation 3 and iPad. If you haven’t checked out my reviews of the first two episodes, you’ll want to do first that by following these links, otherwise, released today, here’s They Stole Max’s Brain!
At the end of the second episode, Sam & Max had just finished getting sucked in and out of old film footage of one of their great grandparents adventures. Sam walked away for a few minutes and when he returned, Max was standing all zombified with his head split open. They Stole Max’s Brain takes place immediately where The Tomb of Sammun’mak left off and you begin the adventure playing solely as Sam as you try to figure out what the hell just happened. Early investigations shows that the Devil’s toybox has been stolen, and as a result of the theft, General Skunkape was able to escape the Penal Zone and of course he is your primary suspect. Villains of previous episodes will make an appearance throughout the mystery to reveal how all of the toys of power, the devil’s toybox and all of the previous episodes actually tie together.
Your adventure will take you primarily around the city to new destinations as you interrogate suspects, cause some trouble and even become involved with a distortion in the space time continuum if you will, and subject our world to an alternate reality. Of course, the story is very interesting and should keep you on the tips of your toes to see what’s going to happen next and it’s nice that we finally see how some of the previous plot elements are all involved together.
Like the previous episodes, They Stole Max’s Brain took me about four and a half hours to complete. Initially you’ll acquire a new game-play mechanic dealing with interrogation, as Sam has to figure out what the heck happened to Max’s brain. You will be presented with several options to threaten the suspect, call out their lies, and acting as if you’re in a film noir to convince them to give up what they know. You’ve only got a few seconds to use the actions before the suspect will continue on with their story, so you’ve got to choose the right action at the right time to get the results you are looking for, which in term will involve you going through some conversations several times. I didn’t particularly find this very entertaining though. I would have rather just gotten to the point and moved on.
You’ll eventually be introduced to a new character who can use the same powers as Max, specifically the powers of Future Vision, Silly Putty Transformation and Teleportation. The future vision is really only used to solve one puzzle while the rest of the time it leads to a bit of confusion, and the teleportation is only used once or twice to solve some simple puzzles, so primarily you’ll be solving the puzzles with your use of interrogation, logic and lots and lots of silly putty transformations. Really, the game-play of this particular episode was kind of stale; I wasn’t quite as excited after playing through this episode as I was with the first two.
If you haven’t noticed by now, the graphics and sound are always great in Telltale Games with their proprietary engine. Specifically in They Stole Max’s Brain, the visuals are a lot like those that you’d see in an old detective movie from the 50s. I didn’t quite find the music as entertaining this time around, but the voice acting was of course top notch. There are a few new interesting characters that you’ll also run into, including Sal the Museum Security guard, who I can’t confirm, but sounded exactly like Patrick Warburton, and as such, seemed to be based off of the stereotypical role that he ALWAYS plays. I loved it.
Like all of the TellTale games I’ve played over the past year or so, I of course enjoyed the latest episode of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse. The cliffhanger at the end of They Stole Max’s Brain was not as startling as the previous episodes, but it’ll keep me coming back for more. All in all though, this episode wasn’t as good as its successors. The only new mechanics were the interrogation stuff, but that was over in about thirty minutes or so. The story was interesting, but really lacked the humor that the other episodes had. It’s really the interaction between Sam and Max that make the series entertaining, so when one of them isn’t around for most of the episode, it kind of makes things rather bland. Nonetheless, if you haven’t checked out any of these games yet, I think it’s worth dropping the 35 bucks for the series. For those of you who have played some of these games, what were some of your favorite one-liners or pop-culture jokes that you caught thrown into the dialog? Leave your questions and comments below!
