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When I played Episode 4, I hoped for a big, memorable finish. Telltale seems to have had the same idea – LITERALLY – as Episode 5 centers a very large, out-of-control Monster Max who needs to have his memory jolted.

Oh: at this point in the review, I want you to choose your film reference that I will use a little later on. You should select either “The Fantastic Journey (1966),” “Inner Space (1987)” or “Osmosis Jones (2001).” Assign it to variable %MOVIEREF.

“The City That Dares Not Sleep” features Sam once again rallying to rescue Max, joined by a team of characters from across the entire Sam & Max history. And you guys? The ending.

Thanks to a convoluted explosion of psychic toys and dark matter, Max has been transformed into a Godzilla-like monster. Sam has to find a way to restore his little buddy, preferably without having to kill him. You control Sam for most of this episode, but you do get to drive Monster Max around the city for a little on a memory scavenger hunt.

Episode 5 is easily the most fan-oriented of the batch, featuring unexplained guest turns by plenty of older characters. Sybil makes her re-appearance, pregnant with the baby of the Abraham Lincoln Monument. No, they’re not going to explain that for you late-comers. Buy the previous seasons!

Once this new team of scientists, government agents and alien sympathizers has been assembled, Sam takes some of them inside Max’s body a la %MOVIEREF. But rather than see a bunch of bloodstreams and organ innards, the game takes a metaphysical approach and visually retranslates Max’s internal topography as a nice suburban family home. His brain becomes a media-stocked living room. His stomach, the kitchen. And, after all these years, we finally get to see where Max hides his inventory! Brilliant.

One of my favorite moments all season can be found inside Max’s brain-room. Sam finds a collection of albums that are supposed to represent the fledgling novels Max has always wanted to write. You can play these albums and trigger some great audio of Max reading snippets, like books-on-tape. Which is nice, because otherwise the guy doing Max’s voice might not have had a lot to do this episode. (Of course, he’s probably plenty busy with that poker game.)

“The City That Dares Not Sleep” is a fun finish to the season. It crams in a lot of different environments and characters for a big ol’ finale to the Toys of Power plot. One item I probably haven’t stressed enough in my reviews of Season 3 is that “Devil’s Playhouse” tends to avoid backtracking. At least, it avoids that old-style adventure game backtracking where you end up criss-crossing the game’s entirety over and over again. Overall, I think “Devil’s Playhouse” is better in this regard even over Telltale’s similarly excellent “Tales of Monkey Island.”

And really: enjoy that ending.

The complete run of “The Devil’s Playhouse” has been discounted to $19.99 on PS3 (Amazon order link). The PC/Mac version is also $19.99.

For a big finish with lots of variety, but maybe a little too fan-servicey with cameo players… the final episode of Sam & Max on PS3, “The City That Dares Not Sleep,” gets 4 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Sam & Max – The Devil’s Playhouse: The City That Dares Not Sleep was released August 2010 (NA) on PlayStation Network.
Rated E10+

Check out Sam & Max and other PS3 reviews at Test Freaks.