What's Wrong With Season 3?
I swear, a lot of people say some Season 3 episodes (or all) are not what they want. Honestly? There is still inventory Gameplay, still Sam and Max, very wacky and crazy happenings (much as in the comics and TV show) and the best graphics out of all the Seasons, not in a very bland style like usually. So I want all of the naysayers to post on this: What makes it bad? 
(P.S I think this is the best Sam And Max Season yet, not to mention 303 is my favorite Sam and Max episode of all time.)
(P.S I think this is the best Sam And Max Season yet, not to mention 303 is my favorite Sam and Max episode of all time.)
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you and I are one in the same, The Devil's Playhouse is so far the greatest season yet!!! The Penal Zone is my favorite episode.
The problem I think: either a: some people can't accept change or b: they hate the lack of Bosco, believe me I miss Bosco, but let's not forget about our favorite dog and lagamorph....and Superball
I don't think I need to repeat my reasonings yet again. Two times were enough to people who just ignore my posts. There's been too many of these "fans VS fans" topics and if you are too lazy to listen to another's opinion the first 9-something times (I've counted at least 9 topics on the first page in the Sam & Max forum), you are just stroking a fire that shouldn't be.
Other than that, I am loving it and have no buyer's remorse.
It's a good thing for me I love Sam n Max as well as Tales of Monkey Island.
+1.
I would also add that not all of the criticisms of Season 3 come from people who aren't happy with it overall. There are at least some, like me, who offer quibbles because they love TDP and want to provide Telltale with their thoughts on making it better.
Following Breakman's precedent, I won't repeat my quibbles here.
I understand that the puzzles may be too easy, but then again, most times in Season 2 I would end up walkthrough-searching, and it wouldn't be fun.
Also, Future Vision, although sometimes actually useful in moving the story forward
EDIT: Breakman, I found the reason why you didn't like the episode (303):
It seems to me that you didn't like the episode because it was the exact same as the first 2 seasons? Sure, the puzzles might have been easier, but this "same old" stuff is what Telltale Games is known for (excluding Puzzle Agent and Texas Hold'em), and you just mention it here? Sounds like you really don't have anything bad to say about it, just that you wanted more of what wasn't expected from the game.
You're interested in a particular topic, but can't be bothered to look at threads with relevant titles?!? That's the whole point of a threaded forum. No trawling necessary: there's a stickied thread called Sam & Max The Devil's Playhouse: They Stole Max's Brain! Discussion!
The op is trolling for arguments to "refute" as if his/her own opinion is the only correct one, and it's not the first thread to do so.
This is the only topic on the first page that looks to discuss all the reasons people do not like season 3.
Also I'm sure all that you've written so far, you could have just given a summary of things you don't like about the season?
I realize that. It's called nitpicking, and some people only do it because they fear saying something has no problems is wrong for a reason.
It took me about twenty minutes to solve the first couple puzzles and
Please, Telltale Games...if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
(On a side note, the movement engine is pretty much ALL I don't like about Season Three. Kinda like TTG's Monkey Island games. But it's a pretty big all).
WASD is your friend, if you haven't figured that out yet.
And Rather Dashing: I don't get it. Should I not be playing puzzle games because I don't want to look at walkthroughs? Back in "the day" you couldn't even find walkthroughs because there was no internet!
What kind of question is that? Of course I don't want to go to a walkthrough, I want puzzles that make me think, logically and creatively, in a large and complex game-world. But I would much rather have a game in which I solved lots of tricky and satisfying puzzles and needed a walkthrough once, than a game where all the solutions were obvious immediately after I'd surveyed all the points of interaction.
If you
1) We keep getting introduced to all these cool powers and they keep getting taken away. I just hope in the last episode of the season, we get to use all of them.
2) I'd like to see Bosco, Sybil, and Lincoln again. Also, we haven't seen Mama Bosco or Superball since episode 1. (Although, I have some suspicions about Superball)
It's different from season 1 and 2. And after 2 season this is a good.
Don't get mie wrong. I loved the other seasons.
But i also love fresh and new.
Yeah, I got that, thanks
Where in Seasons 1 and 2 I often found myself bored at how easy puzzles were and how few places and personnel there was available, the new approach through Max's psychic toys seems like a really good idea to me. It is an original way to make up for the TTG-style lack of inventory-embedded item combination, something I really missed until TDP.
'Future Vision' for example takes the bad stuff out of twisted, weird, absurd plots (the often unfair difficulty to figure it out) and leaves you with the fun of it.
Well obviously, if you look at everything you could possibly do, then you're bound to find out a solution.
There's still some stuff to click, and with funny remarks.
I have this probably-correct suspicion that you only think you want them back. I have a crazy hunch that says you shouldn't bring back characters in anything for the sake of it. Both Momma Bosco and Superball made story sense in 301, so they came back. They don't have a role in either 302 or 303. Had they been there, you would have liked them less.
But then again, I have seen Breakman's thoughts on Puzzle Agent and claims it to be better then Season 3 so far, and that is a little overboard.
First, Season 3 has obviously had a lot more playtime (me, I've played about 14 hours total) while puzzle agent is about 30 minute's worth.
Second, the games are completely different, so they shouldn't even be compared in the first place.
What keeps nagging me is if the psychic power stuff was combined with inventory puzzles, and the interrogation would appear here and there in act 2 and 3, for example, to uncover items or to get clues to impossibly difficult riddles, then the gameplay could have been really badass. The hints are at level 4 by default, so there could be help for less experienced players.
I love Season 3 as a whole, but I do sense a huge missed opportunity in the puzzle design.
I see what you're saying, but I think the comparison would have only been problematic if she had gotten into the particulars. As it is, it could be taken as saying, "I think Puzzle Agent is a better game of its kind than Season 3 has been as an adventure game."
Talking about games in different genres doesn't mean we can't evaluate their quality against each other. It only becomes a matter of comparing apples to oranges when someone comes into a game in a different genre with certain expectations which don't make any sense, and then goes on to criticize that game based on those misguided expectations. I don't see Breakman doing that here.
(Now, there is the quandary of what makes something a good representative of its genre. What makes an adventure game an adventure game? What makes it a great one? Some might say the quality of both puzzles and storytelling should be on equal footing; others might say puzzles should be the emphasis, with good storytelling as an added yet welcome bonus. And so on. But that, I think, is a discussion for another thread ... )
On a different note -- and for the record -- Pantagruel's Friend's post right above mine gets a huge "THIS" from me.
... Aaannd to cover more bases on this topic in general: along with the puzzle criticisms, I've seen some rumblings about the storytelling -- how it might not be headed in a direction a Sam & Max game should go in, and/or that it's lost some of Sam & Max's essential appeal along the way of becoming more story-driven and less gag-driven than the first two seasons. (Anyone who thinks I'm misrepresenting their views can jump in and correct me, of course. ^^; ) I can understand where this is coming from, but aside from missing the side gags inherent in having more selectable objects to click, I find it hard to be happier with the way Telltale has been able to tell a more cohesive Sam & Max story without betraying what makes the core of the main characters and their world so appealing. So even the story isn't universally praised, if still one of the least-challenged aspects of TDP.
Wait, what? If it's taking someone only 30 minutes to complete Puzzle Agent, that has to be one hell of a speedrun. Or just an anomaly; I've seen some scattered complaints of short play time, but if 30 minutes was anywhere near the average, there would almost certainly be tons more of them. (FWIW, it took me about an hour less to complete than a normal Telltale episode.)
I have to believe that Telltale is getting the message about the importance of puzzles. Not only from the forum -- TSMB has the lowest Metacritic rating of all the S&M episodes so far; it's one of only two episodes rated below 79 (103 is 74 and 303 is 72; note that I only looked at PC version ratings, not console). They're getting similar messages wrt Puzzle Agent -- many forum comments and reviews say the puzzles are too easy, too repetitive, too vague, too boring, etc. (I liked 'em myself). I think they're running a big risk if they ignore all this feedback.
At the same time, I don't think the criticisms of TSMB (well, most anyway, not all) suggest that drastic changes are in order. All I really want is that TSMB not be part of a trend toward less challenging gameplay. If it's just a "low point" in the normal variation of difficulty level from episode to episode then I'm fine with that. If otoh 304 and 305 don't provide more complex and challenging puzzles, then I'll be very sad. I think we just have to wait and see.
Story and gameplay is great, of course not perfect but compared to the first 2 seasons which had real lowpoints (the episode in the casino was horrible for example) its very solid so far.
If I had to nitpick I`d have to say that in 303 I really felt like they shouldn`t cut the already short episode in even smaller disconnected parts. It works in longer games, but in Episodes you quickly feel trapped in a pretty small cage (nearly everything in the museum happens in one room). Also the riddles in the "alternate reality" were pretty simple, particularly because there were only 3 simple independent ones (more cutting down the game into small pieces).
In Episode 2 you atleast could(/had to) switch between the section, so they weren't totally disconnected.
That's definitely a good part of the reason why TSMB was less challenging.
I don't think we're going back to that, it would probably require significant changes to the Telltale game engine. Most people have gotten used to it, some even like it better. (I actually use my iPod touch as a trackpad for navigating the game, works pretty well.
I don't know how this arises as such a problem now: 201 Had only Straight & Narrow, Santa's Workshop, and if you count the locations in the flashbacks (which are all reused but 1).
Also, I don't think the same charm is there as the past ones. The Devil's Playhouse seems a lot darker, and less...quirky. It's all a cumulitive thing.
... aaaaaand, to complicate things a little further: as much as I love Season 2, probably the one thing I can criticise it for is the weak overarching story. while Season 1 was great with the