Sam & Max are two of the greatest cult cartoon characters of the 90s and the brainchild of brilliant cartoonist Steve Purcell. This animal-based psychotic detective duo have been giving their fans chuckles since the late 80s, and some of their best offerings have been in video game form. Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse is the third season of Telltale’s take on the characters, and it’s our job to see if it still lives up to the hype now it’s a decade later and we’re playing the games on a Nintendo Switch.
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What Is Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse?
As stated above, Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse is the third series of episodic adventure games based on Purcell’s IP and produced by Telltale Games. The season is split into 5 episodes and tells the tale of a weird collection of children’s toys that keep giving Max dangerous psychic powers. The freelance police are once again tasked with keeping people (mostly) safe from these terrible toys, even if Max is technically the president now.
As this is the third season of an ongoing storyline, you’ll probably miss out on a few things if you’ve not played the last two seasons. One great example is the aforementioned presidency of the US, something resulting from the end of season two. Beyond a few minor details, however, you can pretty much just jump straight in, partially thanks to the chaotic nature of the characters and storyline.
Sam, Max and Alien Attacks
The first time I experienced Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse, I had only ever played 96’s Hit the Road and was playing on a PS3. It’s nice to know that going back after having played the first two games now, and doing so on a modern system, the game still totally holds up and still manages to make me laugh and smile all the time.
The characters are still as wacky as they ever were, and the combination of strange meta-humour and surreal events has remained incredibly engaging. You have to defeat invading alien monkeys and deal with an army of clones, and the entire thing is framed as a parody of The Twilight Zone that gets some great payoff in the later episodes. From comedy to storyline, the narrative and writing elements of this game have only improved with time.
Toy Time
If you’ve ever played another ‘modern’ adventure game in the Telltale style, then you’ll be relatively familiar with how Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse works. The developer blended classic inventory-puzzle-based adventure games and Telltale’s more character/dialogue-driven approach. The result is a game that doesn’t have the same branching narrative style of games like The Walking Dead, but it instead feels more like classic LucasArts games where you have full control over the character in 3D space.
It’s a shame that more adventure games that used this style didn’t get popular. Going back to this feels like a breath of fresh air after the so-called ‘modern’ style of adventure games has been done to death by the developers and publishers who came after. Sure, you have to get yourself on the somewhat zany line of logic if you want to actually have a hope of beating the puzzles, but you can at least brute-force the solution to most of the puzzles if you’re so inclined.
A Puzzling Bit of Performance
So, the game holds up well in terms of graphics, gameplay, and writing, what can’t it do? Well, in terms of hiccups, the most obvious one seems to be performance. At least in handheld mode on Switch, the game freezes and hiccups every so often during a scene transition or loading segment. These hiccups mostly take the form of freezing and stuttering, but I did get at least one crash from the game.
There’s diligent autosaving, so it was a quick recovery, but it is a bit puzzling that the game has any issues playing at all. It’s a relatively old game, and we’ve seen a lot more visually impressive stuff pulled off on the Switch with fewer issues. There are some minor graphical updates, mostly UI and lighting enhancements to make it more ‘comic-y’, to explain a jump in power needs, but honestly, unless you’re a hardcore graphics enthusiast (and if so, why are you playing this?), you probably won’t care much.
Summary
Slight performance woes aside, Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse still manages to feel like the best of the series, at least in terms of modern efforts. Not only does it have the classic chaotic storyline and dialogue that we expect from the duo, but it also manages to hybridize the old-school style of point-and-click gameplay with more modern Telltale-style adventure games. Also, you can play it on the go, which is always a great addition to a game. If you’ve not already played it, this is a great version of Sam & Max’s latest non-VR, non-remake game, even if said game is now over a decade old.
Developer: Skunkape Games, Telltale Games
Publisher: Skunkape Games, Telltale Games
Platforms: PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox Series, Xbox One
Release Date: April 2010 (PS3, PC), 14th August 2024 (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation/Xbox consoles)
