Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1 - The Penal Zone Review
(PC, Playstation 3)
What happens when a power mad space gorilla meets a psychically endowed psychotic rabbity thing and a pistol-packing bipedal dog wearing a suit and a fedora?
Sam and Max has finally arrived on the Playstation 3. The past two game series (or 'seasons'), "Sam and Max Save the World" and "Sam and Max Beyond Space and Time", have appeared previously on the PC, Xbox Live, and once on the Nintendo Wii ("Sam and Max Save the World"). But now Playstation 3 owners can partake in the insane tales of this bizarre comedy duo in the Playstation 3 and PC exclusive: "The Devil's Playhouse".
Despite not being a franchise as well known as Mario, Sonic or Zelda, Sam and Max have a fairly successful series of video games that began back in 1992 with their first game, "Sam and Max: Hit the Road" by LucasArts for DOS PC's.
Sam and Max first appeared in comic book form before writer/creator Steve Purcell was hired by LucasArts, during which Sam and Max comic strips were featured in the LucasArts newsletters, and the comedy duo were used in internal testing the LucasArts SCUMM video game engine. After LucasArts gained notoriety with the classic video games "Maniac Mansion" and "The Secret of Monkey Island", the company decided to let Sam and Max star in their own video game.
Since Sam and Max's debut, they brought about four video game sequels, though the latest three entries in the ongoing series are no longer published through LucasArts, but through Telltale Games, a company formed by former LucasArts employees.
Sam & Max on DOS
Until only recently my own experience with the Sam and Max franchise was extremely limited. I remember playing a demo of "Sam and Max Hit the Road" on DOS in my childhood, and prior to "The Devil's Playhouse Episode 1: The Penal Zone", my only venture into the latest Sam and Max games was a demo of "Abe Lincoln Must Die" from the "Sam and Max Save the World" series. My previous inexperience with the series will be reflected in this review as I will be writing from the perspective of a newcomer to the series. This will probably help the newbies to Sam and Max determine whether or not to take the plunge. However, if you are already familiar with Sam and Max, you will need little convincing to pick up this title.
Characters
Sam - A bipedal overweight dog that wears a fedora and is prone to long-winded sentences and elaborate terminology. Sam is the more devoted to justice of the two and he takes his work seriously for the most part. Sam is normally calm cool and collected but can also be prone to fits of anger in which, in an ironic twist, Max has to calm Sam down. Sam carries around a Dirty Harry-style revolver and he is quick to the draw but is also a really lousy shot.
Max - A psychotic, impulsive, uninhibited and hyperactive rabbit with a permanent Cheshire cat grin that is the most enjoyable of the duo because of his witticisms and his being prone to acts of violence. Max defeated Stone Abraham Lincoln in a political race for Presidency of the United States and has won a second term thanks to an outbreak of the plague that brought the nation together. He doesn't wear clothing, and where exactly he keeps most of his items is none of our damned business.
General Skun-ka'pe - Referred to by Sam and Max as "General Skunk Ape", this intergalactic simian is in search of the toys of Yog-Soggoth which will empower him to conquer the univer- er... he will give to his nephew in Canada. Skunk Ape wants to share his knowledge and his superior alien technology with the people of earth, especially the Mole Men who work under the streets of the city. He sends out invitations to all the Mole Men of earth to visit his space ship to be turned into rocket fuel- ...er, be transported to another world of their choice for an intergalactic vacation. Yes...
...He's not going to kill them...
During their adventure, Sam and Max visit characters from previous Sam and Max games, such as the sea-fairing fry cook Grandpa Stinky, his devious daughter and diner-manager Stinky (yeah, her name is 'Stinky', too), the hard-nosed classic detective Flint Paper, the unemployed and down on his luck mole man Harry Moleman, and the of the foxy 70's black-sploitation apparition soul-sister and scientific genius Mama Bosco. Those who are unfamiliar with these characters, such as myself, are (almost too) quickly brought up to speed during their conversations with Sam and Max. Newcommers to the Sam and Max video games will not likely get the same satisfaction of seeing these returning characters and may feel left in the dark on a few of the jokes. But regardless of how abruptly the player is brought up to speed, the characters are all fun, quirky and interesting in their own peculiar ways.
Story
If you are a "Sam and Max virgin", then nothing can honestly prepare you for a Sam and Max story. Maybe watching an episode of The Adventures of Sam and Max: Freelance Police animated series will help you understand the brand of lunacy that you are getting yourself into:
The Adventures of Sam and Max: Freelance Police
"Bad Day on the Moon"
The story of The Penal Zone begins with a creepy black-and-white narrator setting the story in motion in a Twilight Zone fashion. Sam and Max have been captured and imprisoned aboard General Skun-ka'pe's space ship (which is shaped like a giant metal gorilla's head). As the walking, talking space gorilla goes on a violent rampage through the city, destroying buildings with his space ship's arsenal, Sam and Max use Max's newly found psychic powers to escape their holding cells, place a homing beacon on General Skun-ka'pe's back without his noticing, and open a dimensional rift that sucks him back into the intergalactic prison dimension, known as the Penal Zone, in one swift stroke. *snicker snicker*.
The creepy narrator of The Devil's Playhouse and the abducted girl Stinky.
And after Sam and Max live happily ever after, Max takes off his new-found future-telling View-Master toy and both he and Sam - now in the present time and no longer the future- are wonder what this vision of the future means. And more importantly, how did Sam see it, too?
Just then, a giant space ship shaped like a gorilla head crushes the building just to the side of Sam and Max's condemned office building, and out steps the very same walking talking space ape, General Skun-ka'pe (aka "Skunk Ape"), who bids the people of earth greetings with a message of peace and love. Agent Superball, President Max's bodyguard and Secret Service agent, appears and offers the extra-terrestrial primate welcome and deluxe accommodations and travel coupons. Skun-ka'pe explains that he is searching the universe for the Toys of Yog-Soggoth, powerful relics that appear like normal 1950's toys (paddle-balls, toy phones, view-masters, etc) but they have powerful psychic powers. Sam and Max recall Max's wandering upon the future-telling View-Master (aka "The Eyes of Yog-Soggoth") and gaining psychic powers, though neither tell Skun-ka'pe because, thanks to the future-telling Eyes of Yog-Soggoth, they know that Skun-ka'pe can't be trusted.
Confused yet about the flow of time in this story?
Sam and Max then board General Skun-ka'pe's space ship where they find and resuscitate an alien brain that communicates telepathically with the two. The alien brain reveals that Skun-ka'pe is an escaped intergalactic criminal who tricked him into going onboard his ship and stole his psychic brain in order to find the Toys of Yog-Soggoth and conquer the universe. Sam and Max tell him that they are already aware that "Skunk Ape" was a bad guy and no one on earth is stupid enough to believe that he is a good guy... except for Grandpa Stinky who is more than willing to let his granddaughter, girl Stinky, become Skun-ka'pe's "shaven queen". So it is up to Sam and Max to stop General Skun-ka'pe from retrieving the rest of the Toys of Yog-Soggoth and save the universe.
The alien brain and General Skun-ka'pe
Gameplay
Like the original Sam and Max video game for DOS, The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1: The Penal Zone is a point-and-click adventure game. Those who have ever played classic games like Maniac Mansion or The Secret of Monkey Island games will know the style. You control Sam and Max, and you use your cursor to interact with people and objects in the game. You collect items and clues from your witty/humorous conversations with the NPC (Non-player character) to determine where to go and what to do next. Selecting a topic of conversation with an NPC involves simply moving your selection around a compass of possible topics of conversations.
The gameplay twist in Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1: The Penal Zone is the ability to use Max's newfound psychic powers by using a few of the Toys of Yog-Soggoth:
View-Master - Let's Max see a glimpse of the future, which acts as a hint system that gives the player clues on what to do based on the NPC or item in focus.
Playing Cards - Lets Max read the thoughts of NPC's, offering additional clues and additional funny dialogue.
Silly Putty - AKA "Rhino-Plasty", Max can use the Silly Putty to copy an image of an item and transform himself into that item for Sam to use.
"LOOK SAM! I'M A BAZOOKA! My life-long dream has been fulfilled!"
Toy Phone - The Toy Phone acts like a teleportation system where you can call up a NPC's phone number and instantly teleport to their location. Later in the game you can manipulate this ability by using a cell-phone to reach those hard-to-reach places.
Nutrition Goggles - Available only on the 2nd playthrough. These goggles offer humorous nutrition specs and compositions of NPC's and items, but outside of some additional one-liners, it is otherwise a relatively worthless item.
I remind you that Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1: The Penal Zone is a point-and-click adventure, meaning that interactivity is extremely limited to selecting questions and items from your inventory. And since you don't have any real 'gameplay' in terms of fighting enemies like traditional video games, you are, comparatively, watching a movie. This is where most serious point-and-click adventures fall apart and get boring, but in The Penal Zone the madcap humor keeps you entertained the whole way through.
The gameplay itself is simple, but the challenge comes from knowing when and where to use the items you have collected on who or what. While a non-comedic point-and-click adventure is more straight forward, games with a comedic twist require a skewed breed of logic in order to progress further into the game. For instance, you watch a mole man step into the 'vacation teleportation chamber' of Skun-ka'pe's ship, and you can collect the personal items he leaves behind. One item is a miner's hard-hat with a mounted light. You then enter Stinky's diner and talk to the hard-nosed detective, Flint Paper. You use your future-telling View-Master on him, and you see him get an axe hurled at his head. So instead of spending an hour trying to find a way to prevent his death (like I did), you have to give him the hard-hat. Does the hard-hat deflect the axe? Noooo... that's too predictable. Instead the light on the helmut reveals peanuts in his food, and Flint Paper is allergic to peanuts, so as he's sending the food back, the axe misses his head.
Conventional logic does NOT exist in the Sam and Max games. It's like if you need to turn off your the television in your house. What do you do, find a remote control?
Bzzt! WRONG.
First you need to use the ball of yarn and the roll of duct-tape you found last week and use the two on an open sewer grate to snag a dead fish (or at least you think it's a dead fish... it's long in shape, boyant in water, and it doesn't smell that good...). So you get the 'fish' and you put it in a toaster in your living room, and the wet fish with short out the toaster and flip a breaker in your house, killing the power to the room with your television.
But after a while you will actually learn to think along the lines of the game's warped sense of humor and, outside of a few hiccups, The Penal Zone will surprisingly start to become TOO EASY. Thanks to the Eyes of Yog-Soggoth, which acts like an easy-cheesy hint system on top of being an item whose use is actually required to get further into the game, there are relatively few situations in the game where the next step is overly ambiguous. There were a few times when not even the future-telling View-Master can help you solve a particular puzzle, so the game is built in with yet another fall back hint system where Sam will begin thinking out loud if you take too long trying to figure things out for yourself.
And that biggest downturn in the gameplay is that when you get stuck on a puzzle, YOU ARE STUCK. Unless you have a perfectly lunatic mind, there are times where you will be wasting an hour by revisiting every location and every NPC with every item because you don't have a clue what to do next, and you're burning time until Sam finally opens his yap and basically tells you, "Hey stupid, try this."
Like most traditional point-and-click adventures you are given some freedom to move and interact in the environments around you, but be warned it is nothing like a Grand Theft Auto sandbox game. You are given several locations in a city and you explore a tight vicinity to that particular location. Navigating the city is a straight-forward process: you simply get the city map from Sam and Max's iconic vehicle, the black-and-white police Desoto, and you select whatever locations are currently available to you. You earn new locations by either progressing far enough in the story, or by combining two of your clues together in a horrifically outdated scanning machine to discover new locations for Sam and Max to visit.
The humor in Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1: The Penal Zone, while still good in a lot of places, really misses out big on having such a hilarious title and rarely ever utilizing it. I mean, you have a bad space monkey that came from The Penal Zone and the mountains of possible jokes that could be made are all but completely omitted. Why not use it to make a running-gag of lewd wisecracks such as:
Sam: "The space monkey escaped The Penal Zone."
Max: "We need an adult!"
Alien Brain: "Skun-ka'pe escaped from the The Penal Zone."
Max: "And thought that Neverland Ranch would have had higher security."
Sam: "Look Max, I found an opening into The Penal Zone."
Max: "And I've opened a restraining order on you."
Sam: "We need to make like a high school girl with high moral aptitudes sitting uncomfortably in her Junior prom date's vehicle, and escape The Penal Zone."
Sam: "We're held captive in The Penal Zone, Max. What do we do?"
Max: "Issue an Amber Alert."
Momma Bosco: "I should take some time out of my schedule to study The Penal Zone."
Sam: "It's a date."
Max: "'The Penal Zone'? A name like that just rolls right off the tongue, right, Sam?"
Sam: "....."
Graphics
Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1: The Penal Zone (I'm starting to hate typing all of that) is not a visual masterpiece, nor is it supposed to be. The characters are smooth and the animation is fluid, but there is so little detail in the characters themselves that it won't win any awards for Best Visual-Orgasm. However, Sam and Max is supposed to have an overall cartoon-like feel to it and on those grounds it does its job to the best of its abilities.
In comparison to previous Sam and Max games, the graphic quality of the locations that Sam and Max visit are visibly more detailed, grittier, and busier in The Devil's Playhouse, thanks to what the game refers to as "the Mayor's dirtification project for the city." The game looks, literally, grimier... as in covered with garbage. But it is actually an okay thing since adding more detail to the locations is really all that could be done to a Sam and Max game considering its visual style. I think that if they made the characters more realistic in an "Ice Age" sense (ie: digital fur, etc) The Penal Zone would lose a majority of its cartoon/comic book humor and charm.
Sound
During my two playthroughs of Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1: The Penal Zone I honestly never really noticed the presence of music. While I understand that in a comedy the music should take a back seat to the voices and conversations, in Sam and Max games the music completely misses the bus.Not only is the music in Sam and Max NOT an intrical part of the game, but it is seemingly non-existent past the game select screen. However, what music you do hear is very reminiscent of the cheesy science-fiction drive-in movie genre. If you ever stopped to actually listen to the melodies in an Ed Wood movie, you'll get the idea of the sort of music that The Penal Zone is emulating: the high-pitched UFO music. I wouldn't be pissing and moaning if the music had been used more effectively to enhance a mood, much like in the comedy-RPG series, "Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episodes 1 and 2".
(Ever notice how episodic comedy video games always have ridiculously long titles?)
All of the voice actors of the previously established characters make a return in The Devil's Playhouse, Episode 1: The Penal Zone. And while the voice acting for all of the NPC's are passable, the best voice-over in The Penal Zone is that of the new villain, General Skun-ka'pe. Skun-ka'pe's vocal style is an over-dramatic and grandiose in an intentional parody of stock Hollywood villains that makes John Travel's performance as Tel in "Battlefield Earth" look like Patrick Stuart or Ian Micelle rehearsing Shakespeare. General Skun-ka'pe conveys not only a sense of awkwardly wicked grandiose but also a subtlety of personal insecurity that makes a great combination for a farcical villain for Sam and Max to thwart.
Replayability
After your initial playthrough you can breeze through the game in less than three hours. However, the only reason you would even bother is if you are bored shitless or if you want to collect all of the Playstation trophies.
Beyond your first six hours of exploring the world and talking to every person you meet and interacting with every item you come across, there is nothing new to keep this game fresh. Well, except for the Nutrition Goggles toy for Max that will provide you with a few additional laughs, but beyond its slim offerings there is virtually no replayability for The Penal Zone.
OVERALL
For the price of under $7, Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1: The Penal Zone is worth the price of admission. But the experience is a short-lived one, and the traditional gameplay of the series is extremely limited to following a very linear series of events. Your first-time-out in the world of Sam and Max can be a hilarious experience, but it can also be very frustrating trying to understand the 'logic' of The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1: The Penal Zone and in determining which items to use when, where and with whom. The inane humor and the witticism of character interactions is an experience that should not be missed.
All in all, you have to be crazy to play Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse: The Penal Zone. You have to be even crazier to miss out on it.
As good as graphics can get for a game that takes place in a very cartoonish setting.
Sound
7.0
The voice acting for the majority of the characters are decent, with Sam, Max and Skun-ka'pe obviously the excelling three. The music is a throw back to the cheesy sci-fi drive-in movie genre.
Gameplay
7.0
A linear point-and-click adventure that is easily accessible, but unfortunately the puzzles are too easy at times while horribly frustrating in others.
Story
8.5
Warped humor is the driving force behind the Sam and Max games and The Penal Zone is no slouch.
Replay Value
2.0
Aside from a new toy for Max to use during the second playthrough, collecting missing trophies, and possibly hearing some jokes you may have missed, there's no reason to replay The Penal Zone.
OVERALL
7.0
A good adventure game that will give you several hours of laugh-out-loud moments. A bargain for the price.
The Sam and Max cartoon was a laugh and a half but how funny is the game?
So what does happen when a power mad space gorilla meets a psychically
endowed psychotic rabbity thing and a pistol-packing bipedal dog wearing a
suit and a fedora?
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Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 1 - The Penal Zone Review
