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Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 5, The City That Dares Not Sleep
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Graphics & Sound:
Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 5, The City That Dares Not Sleep wraps up the third season of this always amusing episodic game, and considering how the previous episode left players hanging, followers of the season don't want to miss this final story.
Visually, the game looks and feels like it has all season. Even the overall, darker mood established in past episodes comes through well, but is taken to a new extreme here as a monstrous Max tromps around the city causing devastation everywhere.
What's great about The City That Dares Not Sleep are not only the dark environments, but also the return of many characters that we haven't seen at all this season. Characters like Sybil, Abraham Lincoln (well, his animated monument anyway), Mr. Featherly and the Maimtron 9000 return in this episode to help in the epic battle against the Great Max Beast.
As always, the game continues to support a solid combination of sound effects, voice acting and background music to make the overall experience enjoyable. One of the more amusing bits this time around was an update given to the Maimtrons in order have them make more recent song references.
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Gameplay:
When Episode 4, Beyond the Alley of the Dolls ended, the pair had successfully stopped the mastermind from bringing back the evil Elder God named Junior and destroyed the Devil's Toybox. But just when we thought the coast was clear, Max accidentally swallowed the dark dimension seed and grew into something straight out of an H.P. Lovecraft novel.
When Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 5, The City That Dares Not Sleep opens up, the gigantic, tentacle-clad Max has been on his rampage for a week and he is feeding on the psychic force created by the sleeping. With very few people left awake in the city, Sam must put together a crack team in order to dive into Max's gullet and find the evil seed and break it free from his partner, once and for all.
This particular game breaks away from the paired character style that has been a standard throughout the series, at least for a little while. Of course, the main reason for that is the fact that Max isn't really available to help Sam solve his problems. As a result, many of the interesting features introduced this season aren't available, namely Max's psychic powers. But don't worry, the core point-and-click adventure formula is still there and holds strong, so even without his little fuzzy sidekick, Sam is well enough equipped to solve the problems ahead of him. |
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Difficulty:
Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 5, The City That Dares Not Sleep takes a few hours to beat, though there were only a few times in the entire game where I felt truly stumped. I wasn't able to sit down and play the episode all in one sitting, and many of the places I chose to take a break were during some of the more difficult puzzles. As far as how The City That Dares Not Sleep compares in difficulty to the rest of the series, I found it to be a bit more of a challenge than They Stole Max's Brain, but by no means the toughest in this season or in the overall series.
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Game Mechanics:
Okay, so Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Episode 5, The City That Dares Not Sleep breaks away from the rest of the season by stripping you of the Toys of Power, but as a way to make up for it, there are times when you will actually get the chance to control the gigantic bunny thing that is monster-Max. Unfortunately, this doesn't always come through all that well and maneuvering the lumbering lagomorph wasn't as smooth as it could have been. This was especially true when trying to move around the city's buildings. All-in-all, it was a nice addition to change things up a bit, but it didn't really offer any interesting puzzles and might have been better if it was simply left out.
Despite that, I still say you should grab your jar of government-provided espresso beans, download this last installment of Sam & Max's third season and see how the still-awake characters deal with the Great Max Beast. Trust me, you won't be disappointed by how this season ends as it is one of the better stories to hit the freelance police yet. |
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-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows XP/Vista/7, 2.0 GHz Processor, 1 GB RAM, DirectX 8.1 Sound Card, 128MB DirectX 8.1 compliant video card, DirectX 9.0c or better |
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Test System:
Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel i7 X980 3.33GHz, 12 GB RAM, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c |
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