 Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 5 - The City That Dares Not Sleep Review (PC, Playstation 3)
The improved gameplay, the plot twists, and the sad ending make The City That Dares Not Sleep the best of The Devil's Playhouse.
By LaughingMan
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:
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Sybil
Possessing experience in the fields of tattooing, dark wizardry, veterinarianship, scuba diving, brain surgery, psychoanalysis, tabloid publication, court witnessing, dating service, carbon dating service, beta testing and Queenship, Sybil has a difficult time settling down on a single profession before losing interest and finding something else to do. While her constantly fluxing career makes it hard for her to gain any permanent customers, her varied experience often comes in handy for the Freelance Police. |
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Anton Papierwaite
his present goal is no longer to summon Yog-Soggoth, but to actually send him back, as after the events seen in The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, Yog-Soggoth is actually merged with Papierwaite and residing on his torso. His new goal is to find all the Toys of Power, contain them in the Toybox and destroy them all, and send Yog-Soggoth back to the Dark Dimension. He and Yog-Soggoth (who calls himself Dr. Norrington) aids Sam & Max against the one who created a bunch of Sam clones to gather all the Toys of Power in order to summon Junior, grandson of Yog-Soggoth. |
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Dr. Norrington (Yog-Soggoth)
Yog-Soggoth has been worshiped and feared by people on earth since prehistoric times, and may be far older than even that. When his grandson Junior got restless, he brought The Devil's Toybox and the Toys of Power over from his home dimension. Ultimately some Molemen got hold of one of those toys, the Cthonic Destroyer, and used it to banish them back to the Dark Dimension from whence they came. For the rest of recorded history Yog-Soggoth's worshippers have gone to great lengths to acquire the Toybox and Toys, knowing the terrible potential they hold and the havoc they can wreak if brought together.
In 1901, his particularly fanatic worshiper Anton Papierwaite acquired the Toybox and a large amount of Toys and tried to use them to summon him into this dimension. This was doomed from the start and far from working as intended, but still ended up bringing forth a fragment of Yog-Soggoth and merging it with Papierwaite's own body, making him immortal. The fragment takes on the alias Dr. Norrington, and gives orders to Papierwaite as well as later helping undo Sammun-Mak's changes to reality. |
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 vast majority of the gameplay has a more "traditional" feel to it. While the absense of Max's psychic powers makes parts of the gameplay feel less spectacular, puritans of the Sam and Max games might appreciate the throwback to earlier styles of gameplay. That's not to say that there isn't a lot to do in The City That Dares Not Sleep; some of the puzzles are much more satisfying (playing twister, conning the pregnant and hormonal Sybil into running on a treadmill, turning the Desoto into a giant corndog, screwing up Satan's news report, and rampaging through a city as Giant Monster Max). However, the puzzles are much more userfriendly and straight forward than the previous games, so you'll spend less time searching and bursting braincells trying to solve complex time-and-space riddles like Episode 2: The Tomb of Sammun-Mak. But again, veterans to the series might feel that The City That Dares Not Sleep was too easy and straightforward.
Max's swanky stomach
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 Papierwaite's eyes slowly travel down Sybil's body and Papierwaite 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, Papierwaite, 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.
I affectionately call the Giant Monster Max "Maxthulhu"
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, despite leaving some gaps about the fates of Papierwaite, Norrington, Sybil, and a few others. 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 that accents the locale and decor.
One of Max's audio-book stories. If the titles alone warrant a laugh, then listen to the full albums.
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 a walrus-gutting, alien killing Eskimo boy that is too bizarre for words; the third is a disturbing murder mystery on the lines of Kubrick's The Shining; finally there's a DaVinci Code knockoff based around the life and times of cotton gin inventor, Eli Whitney.
OVERALL
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. Yes, look into the superior Monkey Island remakes if you have never played a point-and-click adventure comedy. 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.
Graphics |
9.0 |
The diversity of the locations and the various things worth seeing makes Episode 5: The City That Dares Not Sleep more appealing. |
Sound |
7.0 |
A better audible presentation with good voice acting, better sound effects, and the sad score for the final scene. |
Gameplay |
8.0 |
Although the basic gameplay of clicking and finding is still present, the final episode went a step further than most of the predecessors with the elements of Max's mind made manifest, and being able to 'drive' the giant Max monster through the city. |
Story |
10 |
Everything has lead up to this point. With the majority of the story elements coming into play, characters from Season 1 and 2 making their reappearances, the shocking revelation, and the genuinely sad ending, anything less than a perfect 10 should be a war crime. |
Replay Value |
5.0 |
The inclusion of two (similar) endings makes The City That Dares Not Sleep worth an extra play through. Thanks to the story and gameplay, if you want to replay any of the episodes of The Devil's Playhouse, this is the one. |
OVERALL |
9.0 |
The best jokes, the most diversity, and the best story makes Episode 5: The City That Dares Not Sleep the best episode of the series, and the most heartfelt. |
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