The last time we left Sam and Max, they were about to be set upon by a horde of clones of our lovable but chubby Sam. The penultimate episode of the third series of Sam and Max begins with you holed up in Stinky’s Diner fighting off the Samulacra in an episode which looks set to challenge “The Tomb of Sammun-Mak” as the best of the season so far. Does it succeed? Read on and find out!
The beginning of the episode threatens to start off the episode as a pseudo-zombie parody, especially as every episode of the season thus far have had parts that are clearly influenced by B-Movie hallmarks, such as the Noir-styled beginning to “They Stole Max’s Brain!”. Admittedly, I feel that more could have been made of the beginning setup as was done with the previous episode, and in fact, my main complaint with the episode (I’ll get it out of the way now) is that quite a lot of elements of the episode feel… underused. The beginning setup, the clones themselves, and a couple of the psychic powers come off feeling underused, or at least that their full potential hasn’t been explored as well as it could. The new Mind-reading ability feels like it didn’t have long enough to really look at its true potential, and the future vision seemed largely pointless. This however isn’t actually a large negative, because apart from those factors, everything else has a great balance within the episode; the other psychic powers are well balanced in puzzle solving, and the inventory isn’t as criminally underused as it has been in previous episodes, but there may come across a slight feeling throughout the episode that the true potential of what could have been achieved wasn’t fully realised. The other, minor complaint that I have with the episode is the fact that I found this one to be the only one that I experienced problems with in terms of glitches. There were more than a few incidents where I would be unable to initiate the psychic powers despite having my cursor over the characters and the option come up in the bottom right, and there was one incident doing this which resulted in my screen ending up like the below image. Don’t worry about this, as I’m sure it won’t have affected anyone else, and it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the episode any less, I just found it curious.
Sadly, shooting at the screen didn't solve it. Saving and reloading the file did.
On the subject of balance, as the penultimate episode in a season where there were still so many unanswered questions, “Beyond The Valley of the Dolls” manages to get a great balance between story and comedy, managing to answer most of the questions posed to it and wrap up most of the story in time for the potentially incredible final chapter. If there’s a hanging doubt so far in the story, it’s resolved in this episode. There’s still a massive abundance of humour in this episode too, with a lot of laughs coming from lines characters will utter in the background. It’s used a lot more in this episode than it has been in previous such episodes, and it works a lot more here, managing to help the balance of story and humour that much more. One such background line right at the end caught me massively off guard and was one of the funniest moments of the episode. “Beyond The Alley of the Dolls” manages to be a lot more consistent in terms of humour than the previous episode, but doesn’t quite reach the height in humour of “They Stole Max’s Brain!”, especially its beginning, which I still consider the highlight of the season thus far, and makes a welcome short return in this episode. You’ll find yourself laughing in this episode as much as you’ll be finding yourself becoming more engrossed in the story, and remarking how clever and brilliant the game is.
Stinky is more than happy to take down the Samulacra/Dogglegangers... Worryingly so...
It shows how amazing the writers are at Telltale Games that they were able to create such a fascinating story and manage to keep every episode fresh with a different villain, such a great balance of story and humour, and manage to make the overall story so expertly linked and clever. There were multiples points where I had to stop myself remarking loudly how clever the story was, how brilliantly written it was, and a couple of moments where I had to try and prevent my jaw dropping when I wasn’t trying to hold myself together to keep my sides from splitting. The explanation in the episode for why Sam was chosen to be cloned was almost Bioshock-esque as well, and this episode is the best example of how much work went into The Devil’s Playhouse in terms of story, and you’ll find yourself becoming slowly more desperate to reach the ending of the episode to unravel as much as you can. A special mention also has to go towards the superb voice acting, especially for the Dr Norrington and Sal characters. Sal is fast turning into one of my new favourite characters, and a massive part of that is his expert voice acting.
The end of the episode comes with another crescendo event like the other episodes in the series, but with a slightly more epic scale which I didn’t expect at all. While elements of this crescendo event are slightly confusing and difficult, you’ll find it a lot easier if you try and explore your limits as both characters respectively, and so while you’ll find yourself doing a lot of guesswork and experimentation if you’re not careful, the ending is actually massively satisfying and a lot more epic in terms of laughs, scope and the cleverness of the story and puzzles than the other episodes thus far, and helps cement the episode’s place in the Season very effectively. It may not seem like it at points, but upon reflection, this episode was one of the most clever and effective episodes that Telltale have made, with such a great mix of humour, story and puzzles in a balance that’s much more effective than the other episodes in The Devil’s Playhouse, and will leave you heavily debating to yourself which episode so far has been the best. “Beyond the Alley of the Dolls” however, is the clear frontrunner. Even the way it ends is haunting me with the possibilities for the final episode. I don’t think I can wait, and after you play the latest episode of Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse, you won’t be able to either.
-Jokesound
