Sam and Max Save the World Retrospective: The Mob, The Mole and the Meatball (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)
Hello all you happy freelance police and welcome back to my retrospective look at Telltale Sam and Max! We're onto chapter 3!
Chapter 3…. is my faviorite so far of the four chapters i've played so far. (And I didn't skip one i've simply played ahead a bit into Abe LIncoln Must Die! ), having the bets ballance of the truly amazing writing with gameplay. I rarely had to turn to a guide, with most puzzles being the right ballance of challenging while still being fun to figure out. So join me under the cut as our heroes have to play some wack a rat, fake a murder, and join the mafia to find a mole.
Chapter 3 opens with our heroes getting their usual assignment from the Chief: his mob in the infamous toy mafia , a bunch of standard mafiso who wear teddy bear heads, has gone missing so our heroes head to Ted E. Bear's Mafia free playland and Casino.
Part of why I love this chapter so much… is the setting. The combo of a chucky cheese with a casino (having a slot machine and poker but also using tokens, having a buffet (that's of course closed), and having a wack a rat machine) is genius and the singing heads offer it. There's also the fun easter egg of pulling your gun.. which naturally gets every gun in the place trained on you.
There's also the fun of a simple gag: your code words are "does the carpet match the drapes?" which naturally gets a lot of great responses and somehow dosen't get our heroes hit in the junk.
What's fun is the activites are two simple but fun ones: the first is a mini game wack a rat which while challenging, most of it is from the fact i'm playing on switch and the game wasn't reofrmatted from being clearly meant for mouse. It's still hilarious.
The meat though is a showdown with cardsharp Lenoard Steakcharmer whose just.. a delight. From his obviously shady apperance, to his relationship with his dead mom, Leonard is eaisly the highlight of the chapter. The trick with this puzzle wasn't figuring out how to beat him, you get an ace in your office, so it'eas easy enough to see that's how.. the question was how. The dealer refuses to use it as they already have five and there isn't an option to let Max jam it down lenoards throat and steal his ten million tokens. The actual solution though is awesome: ther'es a reflective clowns nose over the entrance, tha'ts not only how lenoard can see your cards, but how you beat him: you slap the ace up there, he assumes you have one, and thus folds…. netting our heroes their prize and leonoard some therapy. Everybody wins!
The next challenge is getting in which is easy due to Leonoards close compettition, the bug.. which being bosco is a LITERAL bug. Bosco has also installed an anti-delivery system as the toy mafia keeps trying to put things in. Gee I wonder if that'll be important later.
The Bug is fucking great, having apparently been to nam.. and look if I have two comedic weak spots it's cocaine and people having been in nam, so of course I loved him. He's also the funnest item to use so far as he's versatile, able to copy dialouge from people, and thus it makes his use trickier in a fun way: you have ot figure out both where to plant him and who to have himc opy. It comes into play more next time but given most other items are just "use them whent he plot says so" it's a nice change of pace.
With him we can get into the back office and Don Ted E. Bear is impressed with our work, and thus gives us a few assignments before we can join the family, none of which are plesant and two thirds of which threaten our friends: whacking Sybil and delivering the hypno bears from last chapter to bosco. You also find the one from last chapter in your closet which is .. there. It'd be werid if I didn't mention the closet but after last chapter's trophy and especially with the next one, it's a bit underwheming as a souvineer. The third chapter is the titular meatball: the mafia's treasured hoagie has been stolen.
I tackled the last one first as it was the easiest to figure out: they mentioned the theif would be fencing it… and in a nice chekov's gun that for once isn't as obscure, we naturally only know Jimmy.
What did suprise me was who was selling it, Lenoard, who I was delighed to see again and have a tense standoff with… only to find out his gun is a pop gun and thus Max easily solves it with a violence. Seriously finding out of all the options that was the one that solved it was hilarious. The game uses the fact you expect something more complicated.. only for the simpliest solution to be the easiest, thus making all the time attmepting ot talk him down funnier. We leave Leonoard beat up and thus have our first item.
Next is Sybil. Her new career is witness for hire, which unrotuantely means the mob wants her dead and has her monitored. The how is complicated as she refuses to fake her death, but figuring it out was satisfying: she constantly lifts a mug.. which is interactable. So you simply steal it for a second, fill it with ketchup at boscos and then shoot it, making it look like they got her. Bloody hilarious. Career wise it's the weakest so far, so not much to say. Same with french bosco, which really speaks to how fun the ted e bears setting and the actual puzzles are this time: our two allies aren't at their best but what we have to do is so fun and clever it dosen't matter.
For Bosco it's simple: use a magnet we got earlier on his camera afte rdistracting him. Simple stuff but still fun to pull off and his bafflement at them delivering while his back was turn is great. Also with Btads now focused on merch entering, you can shoot up the place, which is always fun.
So with all three jobs done, we get inducted into the mob.. and get a shocking twist I should've seen coming from a mile away: THE MOB'S HEAD IS THE MOLE. And of course he's a literal mole. Unfortunately this outs us to the mob's head, and thus we end up having to run. This leads to a fun chase sequence as WE'RE being chased this time. After taking out the mob behind us with some obstacles.
So it's onto the final puzzle: dealing with the mole himself in his spooky factory, where he's making about 80 dozen teddy bears to ship out and brainwash the populace. The good news is his main weapon is brainwashing our heroes to work in his factory.. and both our heroes are immune.
(Wah wah)
Sam because of his hat and Max.. well originally I was just going to shrug but the more I thought about it the more I realize there is a solid answer: Max's mental state is so erratic and deranged brainwashing has no effect on him. I mean think about it: his reaction to most horrors he faces is "again again". Some things truly creep him out, sure, but his thought processes can sometimes be so alien that the hypnosis would likely have to be specifically catered to him to work and even then i'm not sure tha'td be possible unless the person desinging said hypnosis was someone on Max's level of psychosis… like say the Joker.
Anyways this leads to a fun bit where you have to fake max's death (using Lenoard's popgun, a nice literal chekovs gun) then figure out how to destroy the machines. The solution.. is clever: you get a screwdriver and previously the one armed bandit slot machine I almost forgot to mention , that gives no prize and only gave one when used as a hiding place for the meatball sub, and use it to alter one of the bears and thus use the Mole's hypnosis plot on him, causing him to wreck the factory and our heroes to exscapte the twisted burning wreckage as they do every tuesday. OUr heroes pat themselveso n the back but like last time it's clear this sin't over as one of the mafiso bears takes off his head and calls the mysterious mastermind behind all this to trigger plan B.
Next Month: Our heroes must be bad enough dudes to stop the president, then presidential canditate the lincoln memorial… by having Max run for president, a classic case of the solution being far worse than the actual problem. Until then thanks for reading.
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Whenever I hear anything about people either wanting a new console release or whatever in regards to the Switch I just hnng, I mean I’m glad you’ve got the money to want and be able to purchase anytime new one is popped out but I’m happy with what I got.
Now I get it, new console means likely updated/upgraded hardware which means increased performance and all that so I’m not saying its bad for a new one to be a released or that Nintendo shouldn’t eventually have something new but my main concern- as is often what happens with new consoles are released is
- Will the old Switch games work on it / could I still run any new games released after on my old console even if it means having a slightly lowered performance rate?
Because lets be real consoles are expensive, not to mention the fact that they’ve now merged the home and hand held console to one which brings its own problems personally. Now for the switch they did eventually release the Switch Lite - which the fact that they chose to release it and people bought it (I’ve got one and so does my sister) and I think it did pretty well I think kinda proves that while people love having a plugged in console to play on their T.V
there are people who either can’t afford or simply don’t want that and just want and enjoy the portability of hand held gaming.
Look I’ve got a Wii have enjoyed playing games on the T.V. but I also like my DS and having gaming I take on the go and personally anyway if I had a Home console type version of the Switch the hooks up to the T.V I can’t imagine ever daring to take that with me on travel (especially cause doesn’t it need to be docked to charge where as even if its not the best choice I can technically charge my Switch lite with my phone charger)
The only thing I’d want from the new switch is let me idk some how Copy? share? my Switch profile with another while still keeping it on my original device. or at the very least idk share game file data.
Look I don’t know how that would or even if it could be programmed to work like that only that right now you can which is kinda a downer because lets say I did want and could by a Switch right now or maybe let’s say I got the special Pokemon SV one or I got really lucky someone gifted me one or won a contest whatever
With everything saved to the Switches memory now all my games now that I have sure I can still play them but it would be all fresh new saves, I wouldn’t be able to carry over my old saves without like removing them off my current switch- I have no idea if like saving stuff to a memory card and just swapping out would work though I assume not.
If such a thing could be programmed I’m not even saying you have to be able to do it an infinite amount of times. I’m just saying keep they already available transfer option of data off one device to another but also what if even if it was just like a one time deal or idk I’d imagine there’d be some other condition attached to it or something instead of transferring everything off it would copy whatever current data you have on there and basically paste on to the new one.
Maybe you can only do it once or because its copying your already existing data it won’t necessarily automatically update with any new changes you’ve made-in terms of downloads n stuff (on what’s basically viewed as your main console where it copied from) so to keep up to date you just have to synch up the two consoles now and then like regular save data might be fine but if say a game had some kind of patch /update to it or you bought and downloaded some new dlc on the main console if you want to share it to your profile on the secondary you gotta sync it up.
Basically how you sync an old phone up to a new one if you want to keep the stuff that was saved there. But like it doesn’t like wipe the old phone clean of that data either (unless you choose to like factory reset afterwards)
At minimum being able to do that would mean being able to back all your saves and things up on another console and not just SD cards or the cloud- which not all games use anyway.
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Tbh the only other thing I’d want out of a new console change the controllers I can’t even say specifically in what way but I look at them and all I can wonder is exactly how user friendly are they for left handed people? Now the switch light for the most part I’ve never had too much trouble with so maybe it wouldn’t be to bad or I’ve just been lucky with the games I’ve played so uh hey any other Left handers out there that’s got a plain ol regular switch or a pro I guess- you know not a Switch Lite pls share your experiences would love to here.
(in the tags, reply or just reblog and comment whatever floats your boat)
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