Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Episode 4 – Beyond The Alley Of The Dolls (PC) Review
A BrutalGamer.com review.
Thus far, the third series of Telltale’s Sam & Max games has proven to be arguably the strongest episodic gaming series that they’ve churned out so far. While ‘The Tomb Of Sammun-Mak’ was an excellent episode, it’s follow up, ‘They Stole Max’s Brain!’ wasn’t quite as strong. So, we go Beyond The Alley Of The Dolls to see if things pick up a bit.
We commence this episode as the previous one left off. A horde of Sam clones clad in nothing but golden biker-shorts have appeared, and chase Sam, Max and a mentally broken General Skun-ka’pe around town. They encounter a plate-throwing argument between Stinky and Grandpa Stinky, and when they realise what’s happening, everyone barricades themselves into Stinky’s Diner, brandishing guns and attempting to fight off the, as Sam puts it, ‘devilishly handsome’ clones.
The game continues the strong story telling and comedy that The Devil’s Playhouse has displayed so far, with the build up to the finale continuing nicely. Just when you think you’ve got everything figured out, there’s a nice twist towards the end that builds up to the finale nicely, but some changes are confusing.
For example, the main antagonists in the series so far, General Skun-ka’pe and Monsieur Paperwaite essentially having their roles in the series scaled back, with Skun’ka-pe disappearing early on, and Paperwaite helping Sam & Max. Hopefully, Telltale has a role for them in the series finale next month. There also some nice pop culture references thrown in, as usual. (See if you can spot the Avatar reference in the tunnels) There are no new characters in this episode, which is a shame. There’s also a lack of new places to visit, with BoscoTech, Stinky’s and Paperwaite’s Office in the Museum all being used again, and only a couple of new places.
Max has all the psychic toys from the previous episode, plus he gets his hands on 3 more. The ventriloquist dummy, Charlie Ho-Tep, makes a return after last being seen in the possession of Max’s ancestor back in ‘The Tomb Of Sammun-Mak’. In addition, you finally get your hands on the mind-reading playing cards that have been teased in the previous episode, and they form the basis for most of the puzzles in this episode, and provide most of the humour. It’s particularly good when Stinky suspects her mind is being read, or when Max hears something he finds gross. The final toy is the destroyer robot, which destroys anything from the Dark Dimension. The puzzles themselves are a lot more reliant on blind luck than on the previous episodes, and you might find yourself getting frustrated. It took me at least 20 minutes just to figure out the first scene. Even having hints on the highest level is very little actual help to you.
As you’d expect for an episode in a continuing episodic series, the controls haven’t changed. Another thing that hasn’t changed is the annoying tendency of the camera to change at the worst moments, making it difficult to click on things you want or need to click on. There were also a couple of bugs in the review build. There are a couple of scenes in which Max is completely invisible. In addition, a couple of conversation scenes freeze for a few seconds, although the actual talking does carry on. Hopefully, these problems have been ironed out for the retail release.
This episode does seem a bit shorter than the rest of the series. Despite my early problems, I was able to wrap the story up in under 4 hours, as opposed to the 5-6 hours of previous episodes. But the amount of content in the series as a whole is shaping up to be well worth asking price for the entire season.
FINAL THOUGHTS
‘Beyond The Alley Of The Dolls’ is a nice addition to this series of Sam & Max. The writing is as sharp as ever, and the puzzles are well designed for the most part, although there is noticeably more reliance on trial and error than in previous episodes. You’ll get it wrapped up noticeably quicker than the last couple of episodes, but the surprise twist at the end suggests that Telltale have some big plans up their sleeve for the season finale. Roll on August.
User Score:
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