Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse – Episode One: The Penal Zone review

The first episode of the new season of Sam & Max opens with a vision of the freelance police defeating an evil gorilla from outer space, yet the gorilla has only just arrived. General Skun’Ka’Pe has come to collect the Toys of Power, one of which was responsible for Max’s vision of the future. Now they must travel the city in an attempt to recreate the conditions from the vision. The protagonists will interact with some of the most interesting and colorful characters from the past games, as well as meet a few new denizens of their fair city

As usual, some very colorful characters become important to the solution.

Pursuit

A typical Telltale game in the style of the previous Sam & Max seasons, most of the interaction with the game is in the form of inventory puzzles. The player spends most of their time controling Sam directly as he walks or drives from area to area, looking for clues, and figuring out obscure, yet clever ways to accomplish the required tasks. Control swtches to Max only when one of the Toys of Power needs to be activated.

The game begins with The Freelance Police in a confrontation with General Skun'Ka'Pe

The beginning of the story was a little disorienting, since it starts in a flash-forward scene. You’ve been warned now, of course, but when I started the game, I had to exit and reenter to ensure that I hadn’t accidentally been sent the wrong game. After that initial disorientation, however, the game flows well and stays fun the whole way through. All of the puzzles are possible to intuit or guess without reaching frustration levels, and the dialog between Sam and Max is as darkly witty as usual.

Panorama

There are more great looking locations to visit than past Sam & Max episodes. I was glad to see that locations were not reused from past seasons. Even when players did have to visit the same place, it was radically changed from last time the player saw it. The graphics themselves have not been updated, but they didn’t really need to be. The 3D characters and environments of the Telltale engine still look great.

Meesta Pizza, often alluded too in past episodes, is a visitable location.

Gimmicks

The Toys of Power are a lot of fun to use, and are worked flawlessly into the mechanics of the game. Max gets a View-Master that looks into the future, which he keeps for the entire game. This serves not only as part of many of the puzzles and the major plot device of the story, but it is also essentially the hint engine, allowing players to see little snippets of the puzzle solutions. Part way through this chapter Max gets hold of the toy phone, which allows the duo to teleport from location to location with ease. There are allusions to other toys, as well, which Max with supposedly get to use in the other four episodes of this season.

Sam could get a ticket for this.

The COPS characters return in this episode with a new puzzle element. Sam can now scan clues into the COPS database, in order to find new locations to visit. The player must find two clues which seem to point to the same place, then give them to the COPS to scan, if they are the correct clues, then a new location will open up on the city map.

Reigns

The game can be played entirely with the mouse, and the movement of the protagonist is identical to the other recent Telltale games. The only new thing is the Toys, which Max controls from a stationary first-person view.

Not every location is bright and colorful.

Noise

The voice acting is spot on, as usual. The music also works well. It’s especially fun the way the music reacts to Max’s powers, sometimes slowing and distorting while he works.

Encoding

There were a few visual bugs, and one inventory error in the build I played, but these may not be in the final release. Either way, they did not detract from the enjoyment or function of the game

Skun'Ka'Pe stands before a lineup of characters from the upcoming season.

Last Word

The hilarious banter of the Freelance Police, combined with ingenious puzzles and fun new mechanics makes it look as if season 3 will be the best of Sam & Max so far. I’m looking forward to the next episode, and anyone else who enjoys Telltale’s unique brand of adventure games will not be disappointed with this newest entry.