toblix

Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

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Why judge the whole season as one unit when the quality of episodes varies so strongly? If you only look at the latter half of both earlier seasons they are very good, though the new one seems to be better still.

Yeah, both Seasons improve in their latter halves... although I'm not sure the utterly surprising song and dance number in Season 1 will be as utterly surprising to someone who's played their more recent games? (Who knows.)

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Whoa there, 7.5 is stretching it! It's good, but really? I'd say 7.0 at most.
*shrug*

I thought Season 2 was very good. Not brain-meltingly excellent, but consistently entertaining with only one or two minor flaws. Anything below '7' would be in the realm of 'Average' for me.

Now try to imagine what my thought processes are like when I'm marking my students' assignments.

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*shrug*

I thought Season 2 was very good. Not brain-meltingly excellent, but consistently entertaining with only one or two minor flaws. Anything below '7' would be in the realm of 'Average' for me.

Now try to imagine what my thought processes are like when I'm marking my students' assignments.

Read how they are rating it, comparing season 1 (1) to season 3 (10).

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I downloaded it from steam earlier today, may be a regional thing though I guess.

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Nope, I'm just an idiot. Had my games list filtered on "Installed" games.

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The episodes keep getting better and better, Jesus. The noir stuff was excellent, as was the stuff after. A few more endless-loop puzzles (even I am starting to get tired of it), but the set pieces and dialogue more than make up for them.

And... oh, man, the ending.

I... I need episode four. Now. D:

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I did. But then it was still awesome after it ended so it's all good.

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Sam is a much more sympathetic character without his stupid hat. So far this episode looks good.

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I finally go around to beating episode 2 when I saw that ep. 3 had showed up.

I got stuck for a bit in a way that I didn't with episode 1, but with some persistence muddled my through it. There are hints for things that seem obvious in retrospect, but are really not so obvious at all when you don't already know the solution. For instance,

the part in the train where the mole girl announces to her dad that she's leaving her compartment which is your cue to hide before she comes out

.

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Ep 3 was great, but I gotta say TellTale fell into a trap again.

The need to jam in "Boss fights" into their games is a real bummer. The repetitive dialog and animations became a huge annoyance. There was no reason for those actions to constantly reset state, or time out, it provided no real challenge just frustration. Let the final scene be an interactive story, not some ball busting Simon Says procedural event. If you want to ramp up the difficulty, have the player complete a crazy cat-hair mustache puzzle before the end. Or at least shorten all the animations and reduce the dialogue when the player's seeing them for the 3rd,4th,5th time.

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I finally go around to beating episode 2 when I saw that ep. 3 had showed up.

I got stuck for a bit in a way that I didn't with episode 1, but with some persistence muddled my through it. There are hints for things that seem obvious in retrospect, but are really not so obvious at all when you don't already know the solution. For instance,

the part in the train where the mole girl announces to her dad that she's leaving her compartment which is your cue to hide before she comes out

.

I don't know, I thought that one was pretty obvious, but I guess I got stuck on some other incredibly simple puzzles earlier, so I know exactly what you mean.

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Also, that's literally the first thing you learn to do in that Episode, to hide from the ticket taker.

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Yeah, the endless loops are tiring, but I did figure this one out a lot sooner than in the past. (There was no extremely ordinary torch incident this time around.)

Maybe I'm just getting the hang of this stuff now, I dunno.

I'll also say that the (literally beginning-of-the-episode spoilers here)

noir dialogue mechanic seems like an extension of the endless loop puzzle in retrospect, but while I was playing the game it certainly didn't feel that way - it felt much more awesome

.

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I didn't mind the endless loops this time, mainly because there weren't long unskippable sections between each gameplay bit and because the dialogue options leading to puzzle success were generally well-signposted. Because of that, I was able to try out all the other options first just to see what they did.

This was actually the first Telltale game that I haven't gotten stuck and had to refer to a walkthrough. Interesting puzzles and a good few laughs, so thumbs up for 303.

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I didn't mind the endless loops this time, mainly because there weren't long unskippable sections between each gameplay bit and because the dialogue options leading to puzzle success were generally well-signposted. Because of that, I was able to try out all the other options first just to see what they did.

This was actually the first Telltale game that I haven't gotten stuck and had to refer to a walkthrough. Interesting puzzles and a good few laughs, so thumbs up for 303.

I'm actually very proud of myself, in that...

Damnit. I was going to say that I haven't referred to a guide at all, but then I realised I did for the boss battle at the end of 302.

Apart from that though, I'm proud of myself. :P

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I was less enamored of Episode 3 than I was of 1 & 2, mostly because it got my hopes up with that awesome Noir sequence, before abruptly changing pace. That opening sequence was fantastic! It combined the best of Phoenix Wright with solid TellTale parody writing in a noir setting. If only the rest of the episode had been that good!

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I was less enamored of Episode 3 than I was of 1 & 2

Just finished & Agreed. The sequence

getting the 3 badges

felt particularly formulaic. Also I think I missed the Sam & Max interplay banter

what with Max being unavailable early on and Sam's banter not being nearly as sharp while he's a Sammun-Mak worshipping zombie

.

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FYI, Tell Tale did another stealth release. The 4th episode is out.

Awesome! I'm really digging this season so far; each episode has had something really distinctive about it, and the writing has been pretty tight. I've really enjoyed the different flavors of the characters we've seen, what with old-timey Sammus and Maximus and gritty, noir Sam.

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FYI, Tell Tale did another stealth release. The 4th episode is out.

Not much stealth about this one, I'm afraid, they announced it weeks ago.

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Not much stealth about this one, I'm afraid, they announced it weeks ago.

hmm... I must have missed the memo. Turns out I got my download email shortly after I posted here too.

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