Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Episode 2 – The Tomb Of Sammun-Mak (PC) Review
A BrutalGamer.com review.
A month after the start of Season 3 of Sam & Max, and the second episode in ‘The Devil’s Playhouse’ is now here, continuing the latest adventures of everyone’s favourite suit wearing dog and maniacal lagomorph.
When we left Sam & Max at the end of The Penal Zone, General Skun’ka-pe’s desctruction of Earth had been thwarted and Sam & Max now have their hands on the mysterious Devil’s Toybox. However, before they can claim it as their own, they get a stark warning in the form of a pair of skeletons that look like them. They quickly realise that the skeletons belong to their great grandparents, Sameth and Maximus. Through the use of some nearby film reels, you have to piece together what happened to Sameth and Maximus and it’s connection to the Devil’s Toybox.
The puzzle solving in this episode comes in two main forms. You have the standard ‘use an item on this person or thing’. In addition to this, the four reels represent different parts of the story. In order to get through them, you have to hop between the reels to find information that will help you solve a puzzle in another reel. For example, going into a later reel to discover the name of a toy the elves are working on, then going back to an earlier reel to give them the name of the toy in the first place in return for an item.
In an interesting addition to the plot, it seems that Maximus, just like Max, has ‘psychic’ abilities as well. This time, there is a Can O’Nuts which Sameth and Maximus can hide inside, and a ventriloquist’s dummy. Sameth doubts whether these items are really psychic, leading to a couple of funny exchanges between the two. “How is a ventriloquist’s dummy a psychic ability?” “I can predict what he’s going to say before he says it!”
The third series is showing that Telltale have taken some of the critisms on board from previous seasons. All the locations in this episode are completely new, due largely to the fact that most of it takes place in the past. But all the locations look authentic. Well, as authentic as they can be given the style of the game.
Another thing that has become clear in this series is that Telltale are no longer filling the episodes with as many characters as possible, instead throwing a few characters in and giving them more things to do within the story, and also fleshing out their personalities. The writing for this episode is particularly great, especially with one of the new characters, Baby Amelia Earheart. This episode is also very light on the references to previous seasons, which is good for people who have made season 3 their starting point. Again, this episode is a decent length, taking about 3-4 hours to get through, and the chemistry of Sam and Max is as great as ever.
There is a bit of an issue with camera angles in this episode. This is particularly bad in the tomb itself, where the main room is large and there are many staircases and contraptions. The camera angles change annoyingly frequently, which sometimes means you end up walking back up some stairs that you were just walking down. If the old standard point and click controls were in use, this wouldn’t be a problem as you could just click where you want to go. The new control scheme of using the keys or click-dragging the mouse, however, make this a minor problem. But it’s a small problem for an otherwise excellent episode.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Two episodes in and ‘The Devil’s Playhouse’ is arguably turning out to be the strongest series of episodes that Telltale has put out so far. ‘The Tomb Of Sammun-Max’ is an interesting and entertaining way to spend a few hours. Some might complain about jumping around the time frame of the story, but it’s well written and ambitious and manages to avoid plot hole traps that this story could have easily fallen into. Definatly one of the best Sam & Max episodes yet.
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