Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Episode 1 Review

15 Apr 2010 at 20:30:11 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (PC)

Are we really on the third season of Sam & Max already? It seems like only yesterday that we heard the announcement that yes, there would be new Sam & Max games! In episodic format! Oh, for those exciting and terrifying days when we didn't know whether Sam & Max season one would relive the glory days of the LucasArts adventures, or be memory-tarnishing tosh.

The result was, in the end, somewhere in between. Season one was a mixed bag – a few joyous highlights (like the entirety of episodes 4 and 5) were marred by a formula and locations that got stale rather quickly. Season two improved on matters with Telltale finding its feet and listening to criticism from the first season, resulting in a series that, while not quite reaching the same highs as the first season, had far less of the lows.

And now there's season three, promisingly teased with Max having psychic powers. What's that? There's something about a new control system, too? Ah, hell.

As it's going to be the most controversial change, let's tackle the control system first and state outright that it's not utterly hateful. If you've played Tales of Monkey Island you'll know, roughly, what to expect: you still point and click to use objects, but moving around the environment is done either via the WASD keys or by holding down the mouse button and dragging it in a direction. The latter, at least, isn't half as irritating as it was in ToMI: when doing this your cursor is replaced with an analogue stick which gives useful visual feedback to anyone who knows how to use a gamepad. Of course, there's always the solution of actually using a gamepad, but that's for quitters. While it might disappoint some that the traditional point-and-click mechanics are gone, it's honestly not that huge a problem, particularly if you've come to tolerate the system through ToMI.

This first episode, titled The Penal Zone, opens with the titular duo locked in a cage on the spaceship of evil space gorilla General Skun-ka'pe. With the aid of a psychic disembodied brain and Max's own latent psychic powers, they succeed in defeating the villain – and there, the flash-forward ends, and the game goes back to Skun-ka'pe's arrival on Earth, shortly after Max's psychic powers manifest.

Accessible by clicking an icon in the top right, which drops you into Max's first-person perspective, psychic abilities are acquired by locating “Toys of Power.” Each has a different effect, but barring the opening scene set in the future, the only two you'll extensively use are the telephone (allowing Sam & Max to teleport to any telephone number Max has memorised) and the Eyes of Yog-Sogoth, a viewfinder-esque toy that lets Max see into the future.

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