Sam and Max: The Devils Playhouse - Episode 3: They Stole Max's Brain! Review

Once again its that time of the month, No not that one! It is time for another episode of Sam and Max to review and I will tell you this right now, this episode is awesome.

Once again within this episode all the graphics and game play is spot on. The fact that I liked this episode more than the others could be due to the fact that this episode of Sam and Max starts off like one of my other favourite games Max Payne, with a Film Noir style of play to the first 20 minutes of the game. This just shows you how much they can do with Sam and Max games and get away with at the same time.

Once again the voice acting is spot on and the lines are all delivered wonderfully. Lots of the short snappy one liners are still there and the Film Noir lines which Sam delivers in the first part of the episode are fantastic and are text book Film Noir in every sense of the word.

The story line if you haven't guessed yet makes you set off on a quest for the people that have stolen Max's brain. This will make you encounter a number of characters from the last few episodes so I suggest that you go and play those before jumping into this episode ahead of time. As well as some new characters we haven't seen before in the flesh... or lack off. The main storyline itself has many twists and turns and its hard to believe that we are only in the third episode of the season, it feels that we have had a lot more episodes than meets the eye. There is still a lot of unanswered questions but like the previous episodes the episode story is strong enough to stand on its own as a independent story as well as slowly interlinking between the main story line of the season. It will be interesting to see what will lie in store for the next few episodes.

Strangely for the first time I feel that the control system has improved and feels a lot more sharper than before in previous versions of the game. The puzzles themselves I feel were a lot more straight forwarded in this game but there was a few that did set my brain working overtime once again. Most of the puzzles will again, involve you using Max's physic powers which are back once again for you to use to your full advantage. However there isn't really any new powers for you to play with even though some are hinted at while playing the episode. You will be reusing most powers that you have used in previous episodes to their full effect. The future-vision power is back and feels more balanced than before. This time, the time you see the future visions is shorter which keeps the difficulty curve up. In previous episodes I felt that this power allowed the user to solve the puzzles way too easily. Even though the visions have been shortened down, I feel that the game still gives a little too much away in some of the visions I have seen so there is still some room for improvement on this.

Unlike the last two episodes this feels the most linear of the three, By not allowing you to travel different parts of the storyline you are really for the first time in a episode playing the game out and not knowing what is going to happen right until the very end. However like all of these episodes they hang on a wonderful cliff hanger that will keep you waiting until next time.

All in all this episode is probably the best I have played in this season the material is still fresh and the twist and change of plot throughout the episode will keep you playing till the end. The improvement in the controls are also a nice touch although I am really not sure if am just getting used to them.

If you still haven't picked this season up and you are a fan of any of the tell tale games or classic adventure games then what are you waiting for.

Simply Brilliant