 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Telltale Games |
| Publisher: | Telltale Games | |
| Genre: | Adventure | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Premieres on GameTap, with a worldwide release the following day via Telltale Games |
After a whirlwind tour that’s seen the duo visit the North Pole, Easter Island, a German castle, and even various points in time and space, what else is left for Sam & Max to see? Well, how about Hell? Yes, for the final installment in this year’s Sam & Max season, Telltale sends the duo to Hell itself to face off against the Dark Prince and his somewhat evil minions.
The goal initially is to simply rescue Bosco’s soul after the time-traveling antics of the last installment, and to do that Sam & Max must first find a way into the eternal lake of fire. Actually getting into Hell proves to be surprisingly easy though (including the chance to control a cool alternate character), after a couple of puzzles designed to acclimate new players and ease returning ones back into the flow of things. The rest of the episode’s puzzles are excellent as usual, striking a fine balance between challenging and tedious.
Once Sam & Max arrive, it’s obvious that Hell isn’t quite what you’d expect – specifically, it’s more of a corporate Hell than the fiery, burninating kind. Hell, LLC features the worst office you could imagine, with two-month old magazines in the waiting room, a clock that’s forever stuck on 4:59, and plenty of other nice touches that will ring all-too-true with the cube-dwellers amongst us. In the back, Sam & Max get the chance to experience torturous dioramas built for several characters they helped put in Hell in the first place, such as paranoid Bosco getting way more attention than he could ever want. Staffing the offices of Hell, LLC are several villains from past Sam & Max titles (again whom S&M put there in the first place), letting long-time fans catch up with some old rivals. Eventually Sam & Max discover that they have more to do in Hell than simply rescue Bosco, but I won’t spoil the details of that for you.
As odd as this may sound, I was actually a little disappointed with corporate Hell as the setting. Even though it’s more exotic than any other location used this season, most likely as a result of that very fact it’s also likely to be the most familiar. Portraying Hell as a corporate wasteland is nothing new (several games, TV shows, and movies have done it), and the fact that a lot of the jokes revolve around the setting means that those jokes are also somewhat predictable. Don’t get me wrong, I still found myself laughing plenty throughout the episode, but the laugh-per-joke ratio feels lower here than it has in some of this season’s other episodes.
However, while it doesn’t quite deliver the funny that previous installments have, storyline-wise it does a good job of wrapping up this season, and in some ways last season as well. Several season one characters get more than mere cameos, and by the end of the episode the fates of nearly all season two characters are wrapped up as well. That doesn’t necessarily mean they appear in this episode (the Maui heads, for example, were taken care of in Chariots of the Dogs), but by the end of What’s New, Beelzebub? the player is left with virtually no questions left to be answered. In an age where developers frequently leave their endings open-ended to segue into sequels, this kind of finality is welcome, and should allow Telltale to flex its creative muscles with season three’s storylines. Given the rather lengthy wait we should have for that third season, it also means that current players shouldn’t have to worry about forgetting what happened in this season by the time it arrives.
Bottom Line:
What’s New, Beelzebub? doesn't quite match the brilliance found in earlier episodes this season, but to be honest it doesn’t really need to. It still does a good job of wrapping up the events in season two, delivering a satisfying conclusion and plenty of the series’ trademark humor to keep things moving along.
Now that I know how things end, I can definitely recommend season two to any adventure gaming fan that has yet to experience it. As always, new players should go back and start at the beginning of the season (Ice Station Santa), because the payoff in episodes like this is well worth the time investment.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
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| 8.0 |
Posted: 2008-04-14 13:26:44 PST