Write-Up
Write-Up:
Well, it’s that time of the month again, time I know that many of you have eagerly been biting your nails in anticipation for, as later today, the latest episode of TellTale Games’ Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse is released on TellTale.com and Steam for the PC and Mac, or on the Playstation Network. If you haven’t checked out my review for the first three episodes, you’ll want to do that first, otherwise, let’s jump right in for a quick review, here’s Beyond the Alley of the Dolls.
Recall at the end of They Stole Max’s Brain that Sam had just saved Max and vanquished the evil Sammun’mak when out of the blue, a bunch of evil Sam clones busted through the door. This episode picks up right here with the army of clones, or Dogglegangers, chasing Sam, Max and General Skunkape into Stinky’s diner. Of course you’ve got to find a way to escape these clones as they wreak havoc across the city, but you’ve also got to find out who created them, what their motives are and what you can do to stop them. Along the way you’ll be forced to intervene a love connection, eat some cake, participate in a séance, and even get involved with a Trans Dimensional Destabalizer!
Like the previous episodes, you’ll get a new mysterious villain to deal with and of course there will be some surprising twists along the way. The ending of the episode is pretty interesting as well, as everything appears as though this would actually be the last episode until of course something crazy happens thus revealing another huge cliff hanger for next months finale. Right away I could tell that all of the comedy that I felt was missing from the third episode was back in full force, and all of your favorite characters will make their return, taking part in one way or another.
Like the previous episodes, Beyond the Alley of the Dolls took me roughly 4 hours to complete, though I found the puzzles a bit easier to solve this time around, likely because I’m just getting used to the way the mechanics work by now. Max now has access to his full array of psychic powers including Teleportation, Rhinoplasty, Mind Reading, Future Vision, Voice Throwing and one new power that you’ll be very excited to test out! In fact, there’s even a small portion of the episode where you get to take full control of Max for once! No new game-play mechanics were added to this episode, but the interrogation mechanics from They Stole Max’s Brain make a small appearance along the way. Primarily you’ll partake in conversations with all of the characters as you gather information, you’ll utilize and combine Max’s powers to continue to gather information, and finally you’ll utilize mucho portions of trial and error as you try to figure out what the hell is going on. You should be able to complete several objectives in any order you want until everything finally comes together at the end. So while there isn’t anything new as far as game-play mechanics are concerned with this episode, you’ll be so pre-occupied with combining everything from the previous episodes that you won’t have time to even be concerned. This episode was great and extremely fun.
Most of your favorite characters from the previous episodes will return giving you a variety of wonderful voice actors to listen to, and you’ll be introduced to 2 or 3 new characters, all with equally hilarious dialogs and tons of funny pop culture references… More so than I’ve seen yet. While you won’t utilize the De Soto for travel this time around, you will visit many locations including the Museum, The Docks, Stinky’s and an Underground Cloning Facility, all via a series of interconnected tunnels, so you’re going to have a lot of nice environments to check out. As with the other episodes, the graphics are wonderful and the background music suits the general mood of the episode.
I didn’t feel that They Stole Max’s Brain was as good of an episode as the previous two, so I’m glad that Telltale triumphantly redeemed themselves with Beyond the Alley of the Dolls! Everything that was great from the first two episodes has returned with a wonderful story and an epic cliffhanger to keep us coming back for more. All in all, I found this to be the best episode yet. There is a variety of game-play mechanics and puzzles to solve, and the story is entertaining and filled with hilarious comedy. The difficulty is spot on for the game length, giving you a great dollar per hour of game-play ratio. How many of you actually follow these TellTale games and eagerly wait for the new release each month? If you don’t, you absolutely should be! Leave your questions and comments below!
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Platform: PC, Mac, PS3
Price: $34.99
Review Video: http://www.youtube.com/ZeitgeistReview
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ZeitgeistReview
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**This title was provided to me free of charge from the publisher to review for you.
