Sam and Max: They Stole Max's Brain! Review

And possibly insulted his momma!

Another month, and we’re once again back on the trail of the Devil’s Playbox in Sam and Max: They Stole Max’s Brain! And with a title like that, the plot should be somewhat self-explanatory.  Sam, having left to go to the bathroom at the end of the last episode, returns to find Max’s head swinging open and his brain gone.  Consumed by rage and noir internal monologue, it’s up to Sam to discover exactly what happened to his friend and dole out some justice in the best tradition of the Freelance Police.

Telltale have obviously been having a lot of fun with genre this season, and They Stole Max’s Brain is no exception.  The first section of the game is spent with a hard boiled cop-on-the-edge version of Sam, helping him shake down witnesses and uncover the identity of the parietal purloiner.  To this end the game plays around with the typical conversation structure, introducing a new “interrupt” system where Sam can threaten, accuse or press his suspects for important information.  While it sounds kinda cool, there isn’t actually much change to the game’s usual mechanics, as witnesses will tell you the important parts of their testimony in uninterruptable segments, then leave you to choose which interruption to use while they babble for a while afterward.

It is, however, nice to see a section of the game where we rely on Sam’s police-work to solve something as opposed to just throwing Max’s psychic toys at problems.  The first section of the game is certainly the highlight of this episode, with the whole scene pitched as a gritty police noir film.  Sam isn’t afraid to dole out the punishment on anyone he thinks is lying to him, and will mentally contemplate the case as he cruises the neon-sign covered streets.

Telltale bring a great sense of style to this portion of the game

But the solitude is short-lived.  Brain-nappers discovered, Sam ends up borrowing the preserved brain of the young pharoh Sammun-Mak to get Max’s body up and moving again, and from there we’re back to the psychic toys pulling focus.

They Stole Max’s Brain re-introduces the rhinoplasty toy, seen briefly at the beginning of The Penal Zone, that allows Max to transform into anything he can find a picture of.   At first what you should transform into and why will be a little difficult, but the game refines the process as the episode continues.  There may still be a few bugs in this episode, however, as using the rhinoplasty toy I once accidentally spawned three different Maxes (Mox? Maxi?) resulting in the game skipping a whole third of the final puzzle.

The teleporting telephone and future vision also make a return, although they seem to be included here simply for the sake of variety.  Both devices only have one situation that necessitate their use (other than a handy quick-travel option in the phone’s case) and future vision once again operates as a dummies guide to winning the game.

At least we can be thankful that Telltale has scaled back the scope of future vision’s hints, which now gives shorter and a little less informative snatches of the future.  It does still make otherwise challenging puzzles easy, however, which is why I still disapprove of it as a gameplay mechanic.  Especially considering that with the game’s already robust hint system, this episode could easily have done without it.

Sammun-Mak is great, Sammun-Mak brings the funk ...

Now when it comes to the negatives, it may sound like I’m complaining over nothing … and in many ways I really am.  At this point I’ve played so many Telltale games that most of my major complaints or compliments stem from the subtle alterations in the gameplay.  If you love a good adventure game, The Devil’s Playhouse is shaping up as easily Telltale’s best season to date, and choosing which episode is better than the other is kind of like choosing the best stick of the Kit-Kat.  It doesn’t really matter, they’re all delicious and don’t last long enough.

As always, you’ll see a lot of clever writing. As always, you’re going to get some good laughs.  As always, old characters will be recycled into new situations.

On that last point, this episode does flesh out more of the Papierwaite character from Tomb of Sammun-Mak, which is good considering his rather cameo appearance previously, and the game seems to be moving his character into the centre of the plot.  We’re also introduced to Sal, a six-foot walking cockroach who works as security at the Museum of Mostly Natural History.  Sal has some great voice work provided by Vegas Trip (actual name) who plays him as a rather easy-going, likeable yet loyal type.

Speaking of voice acting, Telltale have given a little fan service this episode with the inclusion of Marius “Majus” Fietzek as the wandering European tourist.  For those unfamiliar, Majus provided the fantastic short speculation animations titled I Wonder What Happens In… a week before each episode of the Tales of Monkey Island season.  Although matching the voice to the person didn’t click for me until the credits rolled, it was still nice to see that Telltale were creating opportunities for their devout fans.

As usual, this episode will only take an afternoon to complete, most likely somewhere around four hours.  It would probably take longer, but this episode is on the lower end of the Telltale difficulty scale.

The Verdict:

Pros: Players get to spend some quality time with Sam this episode, and it’s great to see that both characters can work nicely on their own.  The plot is thickening nicely.  Standard high level of production values.

Cons: Future vision shouldn’t work on absolutely everything.  Sure it’s a clever mechanic when it works right, but the rest of the time it just spells out all your puzzles for you, taking a lot of the challenge out of the episode.

Overall: While I may not praise it as highly as I did The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, They Stole Max’s Brain is still a great adventure, and maintains the excellent pace and quality of the season so far. 4 out of 5.