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Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

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After powering through it, this was definitely my favorite chapter of the season so far. The set up for chapter 5 was great, and a couple of the jokes had me dying (specifically, Sam's reaction to the

peanut butter ball

and the riff on

The Atomic Powered Robot (Please give his best wishes to everybody!)

)

Also, Sal has the greatest voice.

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This one was great. Better than 3 for sure.

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Am I the only one for whom this game is as buggy as shit? WTF??! ARRRGHHH. :(:(:(

Pardon the ridiculous run-on, tense/person shifting nature of this list, I am a bit exasperated by the bugginess. So far I've encountered:

  • Random disappearing hotspots,
  • Characters teleporting all over the place mid sentence, with the game thinking that they're still elsewhere:
    Max, between the statue of liberty ground and ribbed plaque, both S&M between the control platform and tunnel entrance in the clone room, the top and bottom levels of Mamma Bosco's lab, with the elevator stuck in the inaccessible position
    ,
  • Invariably, when I go into Max mode and come out, I may be in the other zone of a room, with something broken in the interface,
  • S&M will keep holding props in real life that they held a second earlier in a vision,
  • Rhinoplasty gets embedded in Charlie Ho-Tep's gut when taking him out and putting him back away,
  • The inventory button box gets stuck at 30° angle in some rooms,
  • Sam falls through the floor after taking the elevator from the clone control room,
  • The first time I tried to take
    Mamma Bosco to the clone platform, thinking that she would go along with teleportation, she simply didn't, making me think it was another stupid puzzle with the elevator. That elevator in general is such a dumb and unreliable item, it would disappear while I am on the platform, and then maybe reappear after I talked to Stinky. Maybe it would lock all the hotspots, thinking that you're not actually where the game decided to deposit you after a conversation sequence or whatever, it is a bug crapshoot!
    And if I've somehow managed to get off the elevator successfully and buglessly, S&M walk off the frame to the right, the camera pans/jitters to the left and catches the two of them as they seem to fall into place off-frame to the left, as if they walked behind the camera and entered the shot on the stupid side. There is no reason for it and it feels super weird and glitchy.
  • The post-it notes Sam puts on the funky machine in the Bosco Tech lab while one played with it didn't actually end up on the machine most of the time, they would levitate somewhere in front of Sam's chest while in the medium shot of the machine.
  • The seance mechanics were so badly outlined,
    I thought I was forgetting something else somewhere else because I simply didn't realize I could talk to people while the room spun around. I thought I was supposed to somehow make those things that Sam kept asking for happen, as he churned what I would later realize was throwaway dialog.

This is the most infuriating Telltale game yet. And the season was peerless so far. Did other PC-playing people have any of these issues too?

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Granted I'm only a little over half an hour in, but no issues so far. Maybe reinstall it?

Edit: Just got to the Dr. Norrington reveal. Wasn't expecting that.

Edited by Squid Division

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On PS3 the only bug I encountered was a scene in which Stinky's eyeballs seemed to be hovering above her head.

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Am I the only one for whom this game is as buggy as shit? WTF??! ARRRGHHH. :(:(:(

Pardon the ridiculous run-on, tense/person shifting nature of this list, I am a bit exasperated by the bugginess. So far I've encountered:

  • Random disappearing hotspots,
  • Characters teleporting all over the place mid sentence, with the game thinking that they're still elsewhere:
    Max, between the statue of liberty ground and ribbed plaque, both S&M between the control platform and tunnel entrance in the clone room, the top and bottom levels of Mamma Bosco's lab, with the elevator stuck in the inaccessible position
    ,
  • Invariably, when I go into Max mode and come out, I may be in the other zone of a room, with something broken in the interface,
  • S&M will keep holding props in real life that they held a second earlier in a vision,
  • Rhinoplasty gets embedded in Charlie Ho-Tep's gut when taking him out and putting him back away,
  • The inventory button box gets stuck at 30° angle in some rooms,
  • Sam falls through the floor after taking the elevator from the clone control room,
  • The first time I tried to take
    Mamma Bosco to the clone platform, thinking that she would go along with teleportation, she simply didn't, making me think it was another stupid puzzle with the elevator. That elevator in general is such a dumb and unreliable item, it would disappear while I am on the platform, and then maybe reappear after I talked to Stinky. Maybe it would lock all the hotspots, thinking that you're not actually where the game decided to deposit you after a conversation sequence or whatever, it is a bug crapshoot!
    And if I've somehow managed to get off the elevator successfully and buglessly, S&M walk off the frame to the right, the camera pans/jitters to the left and catches the two of them as they seem to fall into place off-frame to the left, as if they walked behind the camera and entered the shot on the stupid side. There is no reason for it and it feels super weird and glitchy.
  • The post-it notes Sam puts on the funky machine in the Bosco Tech lab while one played with it didn't actually end up on the machine most of the time, they would levitate somewhere in front of Sam's chest while in the medium shot of the machine.
  • The seance mechanics were so badly outlined,
    I thought I was forgetting something else somewhere else because I simply didn't realize I could talk to people while the room spun around. I thought I was supposed to somehow make those things that Sam kept asking for happen, as he churned what I would later realize was throwaway dialog.

This is the most infuriating Telltale game yet. And the season was peerless so far. Did other PC-playing people have any of these issues too?

Yeah, I definitely had some of those. The hotspots one in particular was incredibly irritating.

Is the elevator you mentioned the one Stinky and Sal use to get to the control center? I didn't even realize you were able to use that thing.

What machine does Sam stick post-it notes on? The one you get Troy from? I never saw any notes...

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Is the elevator you mentioned the one Stinky and Sal use to get to the control center? I didn't even realize you were able to use that thing.

What machine does Sam stick post-it notes on? The one you get Troy from? I never saw any notes...

Yes and yes. The elevator can be used to go back to the area with the kitchenette, but then it would disappear, apparently going back to the platform.

I did try reinstalling, but it didn't do anything.

And another bonus annoyance: some of the animation cycles were pretty jaggy, as if there wasn't any smooth transition between different cycles. This was particularly egregious while

the puppet played the piano

. A fair bit of the other instances of jumpiness were the product of getting all the actors back into the positions they were supposed to be in before a vision moved them into a different place, pose and animation cycle; just a fraction of a second of a model sliding across the floor and settling in the expected place.

I wonder if all of these were issues where the processor cycle rate is off sync with some internal timers or something like that. My PC is getting old, other people don't seem to be noticing these crazy glitches, it could be that my setup just fell through some sort of hardware testing gap. :tdown:

ALSO: I didn't have any similar issues with the other episodes so far, except for a few lost hotspots here and there and one time one of the characters, I don't remember who exactly or where, standing around in the default modeling pose, with arms outstretched.

Edited by Kingzjester

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Am I the only one for whom this game is as buggy as shit? WTF??! ARRRGHHH.

Nope. I'm playing it on PC and I, too have encountered:

  • Random disappearing hotspots,
  • Characters teleporting all over the place mid sentence, with the game thinking that they're still elsewhere
  • Invariably, when I go into Max mode and come out, I may be in the other zone of a room, with something broken in the interface,
  • Rhinoplasty gets embedded in Charlie Ho-Tep's gut when taking him out and putting him back away,
  • The inventory button box gets stuck at 30° angle in some rooms.

Also:

  • a scene in which Stinky's eyeballs seemed to be hovering above her head.

And also:

  • Toys of power hotspots in Max mode often didn't line up with the "sparklies". Particularly in Paperwaite's office.
  • Once, I went into Max mode and used a toy on Sam. After the short cutscene, it switched back to Sam mode and Max was invisible until I left the room.
  • I had a conversation with Stinky on the control platform. As she talked to Sam and Max, in the background, I could see another Sam and Max way down on the lower platform wandering around. When I ended the conversation, I was suddenly down on the lower platform.

I am enjoying it immensely, but this is definitely the buggiest Telltale game I've ever played.

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The only other time they released a half-finished game was with the last W&G game and that property was obviously abandoned as the company shifted focus to Monkey Island. The game wasn't buggy, it just didn't have as much polish as the earlier ones. I hope this doesn't mean that the last S&M game of season three will be as broken if not moreso, as the teams move over to making stuff for Universal.

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Yeah there were a lot of bugs in this episode, I played it on a macbook pro and got most of Kingz's list.

But what really bugged me was the ending. It was back to repetitive dialogue and exhaustive permutations again. I had a bit of a

rope burning

flashback when I failed to

look down and notice i could use my powers on Sam

. I'm more convinced that the game would be better off ending with a large interwoven non-linear set of puzzles and a cut-scene then it is with these deliberate set pieces. In a way it'd ensure that players ended on the puzzle they found personally most difficult.

I thought there were a lot of great moments in the game though, well written one-offs and

the scenes with the stuffed bunny

were nice. Overall I think I prefer every other episode this season so far, but it was still pretty good.

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Overall I think I prefer every other episode this season so far, but it was still pretty good.

(Please don't read the spoilers if you haven't finished. It'll ruin an IMO great moment.)

I think the

charlie ho tep reveal*

alone almost made it better than ep.3 and

cthulhu max

tipped it over the edge for me.

*I mean the way they set it up with the offhand remarks about creepy ventriloquist dummies and I'm thinking "meh. everyone makes that joke." the reveal, coming as it did when trying to do something which had been previously established to work (distracting samulacrums/dogglegangers using ventriloquism) genuinely caught me by surprise.

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The new and last episode is up now. I've played through the first act and it's great. It might be the funniest so far.

Also, the whole season is on sale for $20 on steam and possible still the TT website.

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So this is the final Sam & Max season? I suspected as much when I saw them all on sale as a bundle...;(

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Oh goody, I know what will happen on Tuesday. It looks like Bully will be unplayed for one day.

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Oh goody, I know what will happen on Tuesday. It looks like Bully will be unplayed for one day.

I misread that, and now I'm sad that there isn't a Joss Whedon adventure game. Firefly would be cool if it was done like Mass Effect, without combat.

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I've never really played Sam & Max but I am somewhat interested in it. Do any of you have a particular suggestion for where to start? Would I be all right jumping straight in with the Devil's Playhouse, as presumably that is the most polished version of Sam & Max?

What about if I enjoyed that and wanted to play more, could I play them in reverse order without it being totally screwed up? I honestly don't think I can bring myself to go back to Sam & Max Hit the Road if that's what's going to be suggested... I've lost my ability to play games more than ten years old, I think.

Alternatively, I might be able to play Sam & Max Save the World even if it's not quite as well iterated as the Devil's Playhouse, if the story is very follow-on and I'm going to get the best experience that way.

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I played 101 and wasn't a fan at all. This is coming from a very light adventure gaming background, so probably a little abnormal for around here. I went from that to Devils Playbox and absolutely love it, so it's definitely a viable place to start. I can't answer about going back to earlier seasons, but I imagine 2 might be ok. The main difference is the gameplay mechanic with the psychic toys which really add to the standard point and click game.

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Yeah there were a lot of bugs in this episode, I played it on a macbook pro and got most of Kingz's list.

But what really bugged me was the ending. It was back to repetitive dialogue and exhaustive permutations again. I had a bit of a

rope burning

flashback when I failed to

look down and notice i could use my powers on Sam

. ...

Bullshit. The ending was genius. The dialog wasn't repetitive. Every time you did something wrong Max or Sam said something new that got you thinking more in the right direction.

The exhaustive permutations thing has always been an option in adventure games, but has only ever been mandatory if you play them wrong (IE never stop to think about things from the point of view of a weird rabbitty thing).

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I've never really played Sam & Max but I am somewhat interested in it. Do any of you have a particular suggestion for where to start? Would I be all right jumping straight in with the Devil's Playhouse, as presumably that is the most polished version of Sam & Max?

What about if I enjoyed that and wanted to play more, could I play them in reverse order without it being totally screwed up? I honestly don't think I can bring myself to go back to Sam & Max Hit the Road if that's what's going to be suggested... I've lost my ability to play games more than ten years old, I think.

Alternatively, I might be able to play Sam & Max Save the World even if it's not quite as well iterated as the Devil's Playhouse, if the story is very follow-on and I'm going to get the best experience that way.

Save the World is rough after you've played Season 2 and 3. The episode plots and Voice Acting aren't quite memorable. The puzzles are also rather simple, usually they require a single action to solve them. I'll be rude and call it a baby game.

Telltale has really hit a creative streak with their puzzles since then, and the storytelling is just fantastic now.

I wouldn't dismiss S&M Hit the Road just because its old. Its more focused on ribbing American kitsch, whereas the new series touches a broader range of topics. Thats not really a pro or con but its a significantly different game thematically that uses the same main characters. If you're worried about controls or graphics, the game doesn't feel archaic in either respect.

Edited by Joflar

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This doesn't have anything to do with season 3, but I just started replaying Max e Sam season 1 and 2, and I can't focus on the dialogue at all. I listened to the soundtracks a lot, and even tried playing along with them, so all my focus is on the music in every scene. Curse your catchy music Jared Emerson-Johnson!

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Bullshit. The ending was genius. The dialog wasn't repetitive. Every time you did something wrong Max or Sam said something new that got you thinking more in the right direction.

The exhaustive permutations thing has always been an option in adventure games, but has only ever been mandatory if you play them wrong (IE never stop to think about things from the point of view of a weird rabbitty thing).

Obviously I was doing it "wrong", because it's a game with a solution and I didn't get it immediately. But your logic seems to imply that there aren't levels of quality in game design.

"Every time you did something wrong Max or Sam said something new that got you thinking more in the right direction".

Not really, it didn't take long before the characters ran out of unique dialog and canned animations.

I don't think it was as bad as the end of Sammun-Mak, but it had it's issues. The piano transitions were a bit of an exhaustive experience.

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