Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Remastered

Looking back on it now, reviving Sam & Max for a new generation was a huge gamble. Not only were Telltale Games betting their entire company on a long-dormant series, but it was a follow-up to a genre that largely fell out of favor in the 1990s. And if the deck wasn’t fully stacked against them, they were also using the crime-fighting duo to introduce the world to the concept of episodic games, something that was completely unheard of in 2006. This could have gone bad in a thousand different ways. Thankfully, the strong writing, great voice acting and bite-sized chunks made the first Sam & Max season a hit, allowing Telltale to expand their point and click library with episodic games based everything from Back to the Future to Batman to The Walking Dead. They also continued the Sam & Max story with two more seasons, both better written and more engaging than the last. We’ve already seen remastered collections of both Sam & Max Save the World and Beyond Time & Space, so there’s only one last place to go – The Devil’s Playhouse. Is this third and final chapter in the Sam & Max trilogy as good as I remember it being 14 years ago? That’s what we’re about to find out when I review this remastered collection of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse.

I’m just going to assume that you’ve played the first two Sam & Max seasons, either back in the day or in the recent remastered collections. If you haven’t, then don’t worry, this season does a good job of standing on its own. Sure, you’ll miss most of the long-running in-jokes and you’re going to be confused why Max is now the President of the United States, but you’re still going to have a great time with several of Sam & Max’s most devilishly clever episodes.

The season kicks off in the most exciting way possible. General Skunkape – or, as he prefers to be called, Skun-ka’pe – has kidnapped our favorite crime-fighting duo, fallen in love with Girl Stinky and is using his spaceship to find the Devil’s Toybox. Things are looking bad for our heroes, but maybe there’s hope. When Max realizes that he has psychic powers, it allows the freelance police to gain an incredibly important edge over the villainous space ape. Maybe, if Sam & Max can solve a bunch of obtuse puzzles, they’ll be able to live to see another case.

That is this season’s exciting gimmick. For reasons that are eventually revealed in later episodes, Max is able to use a series of toys with psychic powers. These toys come from, you guessed it, the Devil’s Toybox, the thing that everybody this season is trying to get their hands on. Some of the powers associated with their toys make sense, like the plastic telephone that can warp our heroes to different phone numbers. There’s also a ventriloquist dummy who will allow you to throw your voice into both people and objects, as well as a can ‘o nuts that Sam & Max can shrink and hide in. Some of the other toys make a little less sense, but are still useful, such as a deck of playing cards that will allow the duo to read people’s minds.

What’s great about these psychic powers is that finally gives us something to do with Max. With few exceptions, Max has always been the tag-along character who does little more than spit out silly (and extremely dark) one-liners. Now he has a real purpose and feels like an equal, even if you’re mostly controlling Sam. Most of the puzzles and scenarios are built around using Max’s new-found powers, and I like how all of this gets worked into the season’s overarching story.

One of the smart things this game does is that it doesn’t over-rely on those powers. Three seasons in, and it was clear that Telltale Games felt they had the freedom to experiment with the point and click genre’s tropes. Every episode has its own unique framing device or gameplay mechanic, some of which is genuinely innovative. A great example of this is the second episode, where the conceit is that we’re playing the ancestors of Sam & Max in an old silent movie. We can change between four different film reels at any time, which means that you’ll need to go back and forth, even out of order, to learn information to complete each one of the reels and solve the case. This is a whole new layer on top of the typical point and click formula, and I love how Telltale was trying to shake things up from episode to episode.

Variety is something this season is good at. Not just with the puzzles and gameplay, but also with the types of stories being told. It runs the gamut from horror to adventure to revenge, doing that balancing act where it can go from scary to comedic to surprisingly sentimental in a blink of an eye. I don’t know if this season was designed to be the finale, but it definitely works as a proper goodbye to these beloved heroes. These five episodes remind us why we love these characters, including the weird and wacky supporting cast around them. The Devil’s Playhouse gives the duo a chance to not only do what they do best, but also try out a lot of new toys. The whole thing concludes with a pitch-perfect ending that is both satisfying and emotional.

Oh, and did I mention that this season is incredibly funny? Here I got so wrapped up in the psychic powers, inventive puzzles and sentimental story that I forgot to mention that The Devil’s Playhouse had me howling with laughter from start to finish. The jokes don’t feel as dated as I worried they might be. I especially love the narrator; a Rod Serling-type that pops up here and there throughout the story. The game also does a great job playing with styles, bouncing between light and playful to dark and scary to silent movie. The Sam & Max franchise has always been good with its noir aesthetic, and I just love how this season tinkers with that in a number of exciting ways.

And let me tell you, this remastered version looks spectacular. When compared to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions released 14 years ago, the characters look sharper, the animation is better and the background pop like never before. This really is the best Sam & Max has looked, and like that this doesn’t feel like a slapped together upgrade. If you’re going to experience The Devil’s Playhouse, this remaster is the best way to go.

That said, I did run into a couple of issues while playing the game. I found that it’s sometimes difficult to move Sam around with a controller. He’ll hit a lot of invisible walls and get caught on parts of the background. This is especially bad in the more cramped locations, which seem to dominate this season for some reason. There was also a puzzle in the second episode that broke for me. I was supposed to pick up a letter, but the letter never appeared. I finally had to restart that part of the chapter in order to pick up the letter. That’s disappointing.

Thankfully, the rest of the game delivers where it counts. This is not just a great season of Sam & Max, but also a fitting finale for the series. It’s an example of Telltale Games at their absolute best, giving us five episodes that are every bit as inventive as they are fun. This final season is also hilarious, scary, exciting and surprisingly sweet. The Devil’s Playhouse is proof that the Sam & Max gamble paid off for all of us.