Marty and Doc are back in the second episode of Telltale’s Back to the Future: The Game. Entitled Get Tannen!, you are indeed plunged into a tale which sends you after Hill Valley’s most notorious citizen. The game picks up exactly where the last episode ended, with Marty in peril thanks to space-time-continuum fondling. The story is infinitely more engaging than the last time round, with an actual mystery to unravel, interesting characters and less painful pacing, resulting in me becoming invested in the characters and plot.

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Owing to Episode 4’s lacklustre experience, I was somewhat hesitant to venture into this, the final chapter of Sam & Max Season 3. The good news is that I needn’t have been; The City That Dares Not Sleep proved to be a good ending to an overall enjoyable season.

At the end of Episode 4 Max was turned into a towering beast-rabbit from the Dark Dimension who then proceeded to tear apart New York and feed off the psychic energy of the populous’ nightmares by releasing thousands of hypnotic, flaming Max-head spores. Pretty straightforward really. Naturally, Episode 5 is all about saving the city and (hopefully) saving Max in the process. In order to do this, Sam has to assemble a brave taskforce, disguise the trusty DeSoto as a three metre corn dog, and travel inside beast-rabbit-Max in the hopes of finding a way to reverse the transformation. It’s climactic Sam & Max insanity, but fortunately the puzzles make sense once again.

With Max out of action, this episode has a slightly different feel to it. Those concerned that the usual banter between Sam and Max might be missing need not fret as Telltale conveniently works Max’s dialogue into each scene, even though Max himself is busy wreaking havoc on Manhattan. There are also no Toys of Power to use, so the once-prevalent mechanics of Ventriloquism, Future Vision, Rhinoplasty etc. are nowhere to be seen in this last chapter. The result is that Episode 5 feels more like a classic point-and-click than any of the season’s earlier instalments. There is still very little inventory interaction and there is (sadly) no item combining at all. Having to solely rely on your immediate surroundings for answers rather than an always available suite of powers or expanded inventory, makes the experience somewhat compacted.

On the whole, The Devil’s Playhouse is a good season, and not just for fans of Sam & Max in general. If you’re into adventure games, or you’re young enough to be curious about this “point-and-click” genre that old-school gamers keep harping on about, then Season 3 is well worth dipping into. The Toys of Power make for a clever new mechanic and create some brilliant puzzles that will keep veteran adventure gamers’ brains pumping think-juice. If you’ve been putting off Season 3 until all the episodes have been released, then you’ve got a good fifteen to twenty hours of hilarity to look forward to – possibly more depending on how stupid thorough you are.

During the first five minutes of this episode I thought I was about to witness something witty and ingeniously satirical – you know, what we’ve come to expect from Sam & Max games. Episode 4 opens with our heroes fleeing in terror from wave after wave of mindless Sam clones (“Dogglegangers!”). From that point onwards, the zombie apocalypse references are just itching to burst forth with typical Sam & Max flair, but they never really do. In fact, this entire episode seems to be a continual string of fizzle-outs, missed opportunities and anticlimaxes.

Is that... Upside Down Uzbekian Blood Cake Surprise? My favourite!

So far, Season 3 has kept true to the Sam & Max ethos and has been an exceedingly quirky and utterly insane take on the whole adventure game genre. That being said, the episodes to date have managed to maintain genuine intelligence amongst the madness specifically with regard to the puzzles. Having a plot, characters and events dripping with absurdity is one thing, but when that absurdity overflows into the puzzles, that is when the point-and-click adventure element starts to take strain. Beyond the Alley of the Dolls frequently falls victim to this and what adds to the frustration is that you are never really certain what it is you are supposed to be doing. Too often the puzzles whittle down into trial and error situations. The most infuriating of these is the puzzle that leads you to finding the Cthonic Destroyer in the Realm of Skittering Ingestion – don’t be fooled by the setup, it’s not nearly as entertaining as you think. I did not discover the required piece to this particular puzzle by being led to it, but rather I found it by complete accident. Furthermore, once discovered, the additional requirements for solving the puzzle were so intensely obscure and seemingly haphazard that I was left randomly trying various combinations. This is the worst possible situation one can find in the adventure game genre; it is damaging to the overall experience and does little more than foster a sense of resentment towards the developers for utilising cheap tricks in order to stump the player.

Cthulhu's cameo appearance cost Telltale millions in actor fees.

While there are immensely funny moments found scattered about this episode (the interaction with the self-aware arcade machine cabinet from Season 2 in particular), they are not enough to make up for the fact that the overall plot and puzzles leave much to be desired. The ending is no different and you will, in all likelihood, have to repeat the same sequence of events over and over, each time furiously clicking through the same inane dialogue in an attempt to finish the scene – which, I might add, finishes in a completely predictable manner. Here’s hoping the concluding episode can pull something amazing out of the bag because up to this point I have really enjoyed the season.