Gamertell Review: Sam and Max: Beyond the Alley of the Dolls
by at August 31, 2010 2:35 pm
Sections: Features, Gaming News, Opinions, Reviews
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The world is finally (hopefully) safe from the evil space ape Skunkape, but now thousands of half naked Sam clones (doppelgangers) are terrorizing the city and they won’t stop until they have found all the ancient toys of power. What a night!
The real Sam and his buddy Max must find a way to stop the clones and rid the world of the evil Devil’s toy box once and for all!
So Many Sams, Not Enough Pants
So here we are on the fourth episode of the series and I want to start out by pointing out that this was my first Sam and Max game where I didn’t need to look at the walkthrough. The use of the “future vision” and the new “mind reading tarot cards” really help you in figuring out what you need to do.
If you played the previous games you know that the future vision allows you to see into the future and get an idea of what you need to do. For instance, if you click on grandpa Stinky with the device early on in the game and you will see a clip of him holding a knife, hinting that you probably need to find him a knife.
Well the tarot cards work in a similar way. You click on a person and you can read whatever they are thinking which give you a hint about whatever you need to do. And don’t think these two devices will tell you every single thing you need to do, thus making the game insanely easy because some characters’ minds can’t be read and sometimes the future vision doesn’t show you anything useful.
Never Dimension Hop on a Full Stomach
As I mentioned before, the toys really help you out in determining what you need to do next, but there are also some puzzles that seem to be only be solved through trial and error or by randomly doing things. The biggest offender is this dimensional transporter that you need to use later in the game. It has four knobs on it but Mamma Bosco doesn’t know which knob does what, so you basically have to randomly position each knob and send Sam off to another dimension to see what it does. If you use the mind reader cards you can get an idea what knob might do what, but it is still a guessing game.
When you are in Psychic Mode with Max you have to choose a toy and then find glittering characters or objects that you can interact with.
At times, though, you have to position the screen just right to click on the character or object, even though it looks like the cursor is in the correct place.
Surprisingly, Cybil does not make an appearance in this game. I may be mistaken but I think this is the first of all the games where you don’t see her. You are treated to plenty of Stinky and her grandfather though, along with some other characters you will remember from other episodes, including an obnoxious ventriloquist dummy who has an even more annoying voice actor.
The End Is… Oh, Here It Is
So far the series is doing well for itself, lots of tension and lots of variety. There also seem to be plenty of cliffhangers as well.
So we are almost at the end folks. I am anxious to see how the series will turn out now and I have a feeling we have not seen the last of our buddy Skunkape.
Read [Macgasm] Also Read [Giant Bomb]
Image Source: Telltale Games
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