So, the return of the intrepid duo of a suit-wearing dog, and a hyperkinetic rabbity thing, otherwise known as Sam and Max, the freelance police.
A couple of years after Season 2, Telltale Games have come back with a brand new overhaul to the Sam and Max Series. Included are new graphics, a new gaming engine, overhauled inventory and dialogue systems, and a brand new way to play.
It’s probably safe to say that the extra year away from Sam and Max has allowed Telltale Games to take from the other series it worked on in the meantime (especially the astoundingly awesome Tales of Monkey Island) and help build a bigger, better season for Sam and Max which starts off with an amazing opener in the form of the Penal Zone.
The new season is mostly designed so that it’s not all important that you’ve played the previous two, though many of the previous characters make a return. This time, instead of vaguely linked cases, Telltale have taken a cue from the Tales of Monkey Island and created a season long story with each episode heavily linked to each other. The story revolves around Max’s latent psychic abilities, allowing him to use many different psychic powers throughout the series. In this episode, you’re introduced to Future Sight, Teleportation, and Rhinoplasty (which allows you to take the shape of images you record with the toy, and sadly didn’t involve rhinos… yet), and the first two of those will come in the most important.
In fact, the opening sequence of the game is the conclusion of the episode through future sight (this spoils nothing, seeing as it’s the first thing that happens, and serves as your tutorial).
Future sight brings in one of the biggest overall changes to the series. Where before, you would typically be given a puzzle, and would then have to do your best to solve it and see what the outcome would be, now looking at something in future sight shows you the conclusion to the puzzle, and you then have to figure out how you got there in the future. Seems like a subtle difference and possibly one that would make the game easier, but one that gives the puzzle solving a whole new dimension, allowing you to think even harder about the puzzles, and Telltale to get even more creative with them.
However, here comes one of the very few problems with the episode. Most of the puzzles are solved by the teleportation power. While it goes without saying that the psychic powers were going to be all important, it almost makes your regular inventory seem even less important than before. Most of the puzzles aren’t solved with items like they were before, and some items are simply used to unlock new locations. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.
The Devil’s Playhouse as a season also brings in the idea of being able to explore New York at large. Not in an open world or sandbox way, but you’re expected to unlock more locations than would be typical of a previous adventure. To do this, you need to use the Crime-Tron. To unlock the new locations, you use the items in your inventory which may have some kind of significance with others that may be linked. If you do, you can unlock the new location. Sometimes its a bit of pot luck whether you’ll get the two items you need to combine, sometimes it’ll be really obvious, though the latter is more common when you unlock a new location simply to acquire a new item which’ll then unlock a new location, and so forth. This probably comes across as overly negative, which isn’t my intention, as I think it’s a great idea that is slightly spoiled by the fact it makes items seem less significant at times, and some of the items that have the sole purpose of being used in the Crime-Tron don’t leave your inventory once their usefulness has run out, which can cause confusion later on. It’s a great idea that works in translation, but sometimes results in you randomly just trying different combinations hoping they’ll work, which I’m sure it was probably trying to prevent.
The most important question you should be asking when reading this should be “But is it as funny and clever as the previous games?” In many cases, the answer is a resounding yes. The puzzles overall come across as cleverer than previous Sam and Max seasons, mostly due to the overhaul the puzzles have had because of Max’s psychic powers. While teleportation does come across as overused slightly, it doesn’t give that impression at first because of the different ways its implemented throughout the episode. Some of the puzzles that implement it inspire more “Of Course!” moments of realisation than previous Seasons of Sam and Max, and the style of the game feels very fresh as a result. As for the humour, most of the game is just as funny, if not funnier in case. There were many laugh out loud moments and times when I found myself laughing a lot harder than I had in previous episodes. However, while it’s not the funniest, it’s forgiveable because it is the season opener, and I have full faith that based on how funny this episode was, the rest of the season should be the funniest Telltale adventure yet. There are only two possible problems that come from the humour. Firstly, Sam and Max’s repeated mispronunciation of the name of the villain of the episode starts out funny once, but then ends up being annoying by the end of the episode, especially when everyone else says it in what is supposed to be the correct way. It does sound like a very anal complaint, but would it have been so hard for someone to correct them in dialogue and have Sam and Max say it the right way later on in the episode?
Secondly, as much as the series is crafted so that newbies can come in and feel as if they haven’t missed out on much, I get the feeling some of the jokes about established characters may not come across as well as they do to veterans. I don’t think it’ll actually be the case at all, as the episode was so expertly written that it shouldn’t happen. Though it might be a problem, I wouldn’t know for sure.
Of course, some of the new changes work wonders. Dialogue trees are now influenced from the Strong Bad games, so you discuss a topic rather than the characters just saying lines you picked for them to say, meaning the writing is a lot better, and you get a lot more suprises in dialogue. As well as this, there’s also the fact it will now show you when a conversation topic has been exhausted, which saves you a lot more time and frustration. The new graphical overhaul works massively, and the new grimy look to everything helps give off a new vibe that works wonders.
So in conclusion, The Penal Zone, the first episode of the Devil’s Playhouse season of Sam and Max indicates that the season is going to be one to watch. Telltale have pulled out a lot of stops to improve the game as much as they can, and the game feels and plays a lot better as a result. It’s smarter, funnier, and better than the season openers of before, and gives great signs that the Devil’s Playhouse could be Sam and Max’s greatest adventure yet.
Episode 2: The Tomb of Sammun-Mak is out now, though it’s recommended you purchase the whole series, as the episodes are heavily linked to one another. The season can be found and purchased on Steam and at www.telltalegames.com.
-Jokesound
