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It’s been 5 months of Sam and Max’s episodic adventure: The Devil’s Playhouse, and to you that means that it’s been a 5 month long DRY SPELL of my normal ranting and raving in replace of the more praising Sam and Max reviews I have been writing. But now it’s time to wrap up the series.
In Beyond the Alley of the Dolls, one of our heroes, Max, was transformed into a giant, H.P. Lovecraft-like abomination after ingesting the remains of Junior. As Max’s rampage through the city continues into its second week, floating flaming Max heads scower the city, serving Max by collecting food and sending the citizens of the city into a nightmare-infused slumber. It’s up to Sam and his “crack team” to venture inside the belly of the beast and save, not only the city, but also his friend Max.
A handful of characters from earlier seasons make their triumphant returns to help save the city from Max, though only the now pregnant Sybil seem to actively cooperate with Sam in this new adventure. Regardless, other characters make brief reappearances for the sake of nostalgia.
So Sam discovers that his visions of being eaten by a giant Max means that he would need to venture inside of Max’s body in order to free him. After Sam assembles his crack team, consisting of:
Sybil
Paiperwaite
Dr. Norrington (Yog-Shoggoth)
The team uses Grandpa Stinky’s truck full of corn meal to turn Sam’s Desoto into a giant corndog to which they find themselves within Max’s body. However, the innards of Max are not what one would expect. Instead of being in the acidic bowels of Max’s stomach, Sam and his crew find themselves in a swanky 1950’s styled ‘modern’ kitchen. It turns out that Max’s psychic powers are manifesting his internal organs as 1950’s styled appliances within a ranch-styled house: His eyes are a tv set, his memories are a record player, and his legs are a treadmill. The ‘house’ is divided into four main areas. The stomach area is the kitchen; Max’s head is a living room; his arms are a game room with arcades, pool, and Twister; the legs and lower bits are a gym, and then there’s the suppository of where Max’s keeps all of the items he stores cleverly disguised as a junk basement.
The tongue-in-cheek comedy is in full force. Sam is quick and witty with making jokes out of the majority of Max’s “organs” however the part that made me laugh like a hyena was when he noticed the Medicine Balls in the lower half gym, and then he thought for a second and said, “Medicine balls… I got nothing…”
Another memorable instance was towards the end of the game when Sybil (who is carrying the human statue hybrid abomination baby of Giant Stone Abraham Lincoln) goes into labor. She looks startled and exclaims “my water broke!” to which you hear the Jackpot sound of a slot machine. Sam, Norrington, and Paiperwaite’s eyes all fall downward and Paiperwaite utters, “… Pennies?”
It’s this brand of offbeat, adult humor that made me fall in love with the Sam and Max games. The humor is always askew but equally as witty without ever falling into obscenity like so many other ‘adult comedy’ games like Leisure Suit Larry. However, the only complaint about the humor in the series is the excessive breaking of the 4th wall where characters make jokes about being characters in a game. If it were done once or twice it’d be charming in a Deadpool kinda way, but it’s a running gag that keeps pulling my ass out of the world of Sam and Max and back into my own living room.
After you successfully assign selective duties to Norrington, Paiperwaite, Sybil, and Cid the roach (whom you abduct by having Max eat him alive), you can now control the Max monster at will. HOWEVER during this phase of the game you have to navigate the city searching for about 5 specific buildings in order to advance further into the game. And the camera work and navigation system on this segment suck monkey nuts. It is literally the blind leading the blind while you pilot this giant Godzilla rabbit through a cityscape of identical buildings hoping to find the 5th and final little building that you missed nine fucking times running.
The story plot takes a major twist when you finally discover the main villain of the Devil’s Playhouse. Although I had my suspicions, I had been dismissing the possible revelation as extremely unlikely only to have it blow up in my face with my shouting “I KNEW IT!” even though I kind of didn’t. Luckily, the identity of the main villain does make quite a bit of sense.
Without giving away anything for those who haven’t played The City That Dares Not Sleep, or The Devil’s Playhouse in its entire, but the ending to Season 3: The Devil’s Playhouse is shockingly good. The ending is set up to be a triumphant and almost disgustingly cliché ending that you would expect from a cartoon comedy or even a Disney movie… but no. The ending is so unexpectedly bleak that it’s hard not to let it catch you off guard and make cold shivers run up and down your spine and make a lump form in your throat. It’s not often that such a comical and madcap adventure can reach into your chest and tear out your heart like Kano from Mortal Kombat, but Episode 5 of Sam and Max’s third season did just that. The ending scenes are done beautifully with its long, depressing shots that it actually reminded me greatly of some of the bleaker and more bittersweet endings to specific Final Fantasy games.
In addition, there’s not just one ending, but two depending on a choice you make inside of the Max monster, but they only differ slightly at the very end. Regardless, it does give you incentive to replay the game just to see the slightly different ending.
The overall feeling to The City That Dares Not Sleep is that of an action-packed summer blockbuster movie. It’s kind of like the 1998 movie Godzilla with its epic scope and the monsters rampaging through the city and helicopters trying to take it down. The only difference is that The City That Dares Not Sleep is not ‘unintentionally ludicrous’ like that shitstorm of a movie, Godzilla. In Episode 5 of The Devil’s Playhouse, there’s explosions galore with the Max monster fighting off helicopters and legions of giant robot toys set out to destroy him. In relation to other Sam and Max games, the visuals push the limits.
The sound and music is great. While none of the tracks are quite as epic as the summer action movie soundtracks by Harry Gregson-Williams (The Rock, Metal Gear Solid 2-4, Team America: World Police), the sound is appropriate and well orchestrated, but most noticeably the main title screen. Specific tracks in The City That Dares Not Sleep sound like homage’s to classic 1970’s songs, like “Car Wash”, while the insides of Max have a cool Lounge Jazz theme.
The real treat of The City That Dares Not Sleep is the audio books of Max’s unwritten novels. When you explore the living room of Max’s brain, you can find four records of some of Max’s truly bizarre stories. The first of which is a hard-boiled, cliché, and horribly written detective story about Flynt Paper, the second is a coming-of-age story about an Eskimo boy that is too bizarre for words, the third is a disturbing murder mystery on the lines of Kubrick’s The Shining, and finally there’s a story about < BLAH CAN'T REMEMBER>.
The Devil’s Playhouse has reached its conclusion, but it was a bizarre but entertainingly funny adventure that, while repetitive and frustrating in places, was an overall enjoyable experience with even more enjoyable characters. If anybody wants some bang for their buck with a casual comedic video game, check out the hi-def remakes of Monkey Island 1 and 2.
Then, if you discover that you enjoy these sort of games, you absolutely MUST download Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse. Five games for one price with this quality is truly a deal that any adventure gamer looking for something truly different should purchase.
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"Humor is reason gone mad" - Groucho Marx
 
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Sam & Max: Episode 3 They Stole Max's Brain
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