Sam & Max Episode 301: The Penal Zone

Sam & Max Episode 301: The Penal Zone

Sam & Max are back to protect the world from a power-mad space gorilla in the first episode of a brand new season from Telltale Games.

Overview

The Penal Zone marks the first of five episodes in the anthropomorphic dog and rabbity-thing's third adventure, The Devil's Playhouse.  

The Mysterious Narrator 
The Mysterious Narrator 
The episode follows the duo as they attempt to stop the nefarious General Skun-ka'pe's plan to terrorize the inhabitants of Earth. Like the previous seasons, you assist the Freelance Police through the usual adventure game fare, albeit, with some enhancements. Players can control or rather "influence" the actions of Max and take advantage of his newly obtained psychic powers to help fight (and most likely humiliate) the forces of crime while also getting the chance to control Sam like in previous games. Controls have been tweaked slightly, ditching the old point 'n' click scheme with a more direct control method similar to Telltale's more recent release, Tales of Monkey Island
 
The Penal Zone was released on the PS3, PC, and Mac on April 15, 2010. A version for the iPad was released on April 2, 2010. Other platforms have been hinted at but not officially announced. 
  

Synopsis / Walkthrough

 General Skunk-ape
 General Skunk-ape
The Penal Zone begins with Sam and Max attempting to detain General Skun-ka'pe in the Penal Zone.  However, before they are able to do this, they themselves must escape from a jail cell located on Skun-ka'pe's spaceship.  Thanks to Max's teleporation ability, Sam and Max are able to escape the jail cell and hide behind Stinky, Skun-ka'pe's love interest.  Immediately after teleporting, Max hears a foreign voice.  This voice, as it turns out, is from the disembodied Alien Brain located on the upper deck of Skun-ka'pe's ship.  The Alien Brain proceeds to tell Sam and  Max that they can only send Skun-ka'pe to the Penal Zone by placing a Penal Zone beacon on Skun-ka'pe.  The alien brain also gives Max the "Rhinoplasty" toy.  This toy gives Max the supernatural ability to turn himself into any picture he places the toy upon.  With this discovery, Max takes the rhinoplasty and uses it to copy a picture of a plant.  Rather lamely, Max transforms into a plant.  Sam uses Max as cover while he sneaks up on Skun-ka'pe and successfully puts the Penal Zone beacon on Skun-ka'pe's back.  Sam and Max return to their hiding position behind Stinky and use a remote to open the Penal Zone.  Sam activates the remote and a warp hole opens.  Though Sam and Max caught Skun-ka'pe unprepared, Skun-ka'pe instinctively grasps his ships controls so that he will not enter the Penal Zone warp hole.  Of course, Sam and
 Max devise a plan to loosen Skun-ka'pe's tight grip on the situation.  Sam and Max make their way to the second floor of the ship, where they find a picture of an alien bazooka.  Max uses his rhinoplasty ability to transform into a bazooka, while Sam uses bazooka Max to shoot Skun-ka'pe into the Penal Zone.    
 
Sam, Max, Agent Superball, and Skunk-ape 
Sam, Max, Agent Superball, and Skunk-ape 
To the player's bewilderment, the story returns to a point in the past before Sam and Max were even aware that there was a giant space ape named General Skun-ka'pe.  At this point in the episode, Sam and Max are outside of their condemned office building admiring a particularly large crack in the road.  While Sam is rambling about the crack in the road, Max ventures down the alleyway between their office building and Mamma Bosco's closed store.  At the very end of the alleyway Max found the "Futurevision" toy.  With this toy, Max gains the ability to see into the future.  Max immediately uses the toy and has a vision of the future.  In fact, he has a vision of the events depicting the events at the beginning of the episode.  Immediately after Max has this vision, a large gorilla-head space ship lands precariously close to Sam and Max's location.  Low and behold, a large space ape named General Skun-ka'pe.  Because of Max's premonition of the future, both Sam and Max are suspicious of this mysterious and probably evil character, so they go to talk to him.  Before they reach him, they notice that Agent Superball is already on-scene.  Apparently, Superball is acting as the head of Intergalactic Home-world Security.  As Sam and Max are interrogating Skun-ka'pe, they discover that he is looking for toys of amazing power.  And if Sam and Max are able to find any toys that fit this discription, then he will trade for it by giving them wondrous space technology.  With this information, Sam and Max ask begin looking through Skun-ka'pe's space ship.  It is there that they find the disembodied Alien Brain, but he is near death.  Max once again uses his futurevision ability and discovers that they are able to revitalize the Alien Brain by using Mamma Bosco's Power Core and Grandpa 
Stinky
's Demon Broth.   Before leaving, Sam and Max notice Harry Moleman on Skun-ka'pe's ship.  Harry Moleman casually ignores Sam and Max and makes his way towards a door that says "Moleman Vacation."  Mr. Moleman uses his vacation card to gain entrance into the door.  After the door shuts behind Mr. Moleman, Sam and Max hear screams of despair.  After the screaming ceases, Harry Moleman's valuables are released in a container next to the "Moleman Vacation" door.  Sam decides to keep Mr. Moleman's construction helmet and his moleman vacation card.  
 
 Sam and Max interrogating Stinky
 Sam and Max interrogating Stinky
Determined to bring the Alien Brain back to life, Sam and Max immediately make their way towards Stinky's Diner.  Once inside, Sam and Max interrogate Stinky, Grandpa Stinky's granddaughter.  Stinky suspiciously avoids most of Sam and Max's questions and leads Sam and Max to believe that she had prior knowledge of Skun-ka'pe's arrival on Earth.  While at the diner, Sam and Max notice that Flint Paper is at a table about to eat some spaghetti.  Max uses his futurevision ability on Flint, and predicts that someone is going to try and throw an axe at the back of Flint's head.  Sam quickly convinces Flint to wear the construction helmet that Sam obtained from Harry Moleman's unfortunate demise.  Just as Max had predicted, an axe came flying towards Flint Paper, but he narrowly avoided it as he was putting on the construction hat.  Though Flint has already avoided death one time, he isn't safe yet.  The light on his construction helmet turns on, and low and behold, there were peanuts in Flint's spaghetti.  Of course everyone knows that Flint is allergic to peanuts!  Flint calls Stinky out for trying to poison him, but Stinky just nonchalantly shrugs off the comment.  Flint appreciated Sam and Max's help so much that he gave them a clue.  This clue was a letter addressed to Stinky, signed from a mysterious person (or ape) with the initial "S."  On this piece of paper was Stinky's phone number.  Sam and Max exit the restaurant and make their way to their Desoto.  Inside their Desoto they find useless pieces of old electrical equipment that seem to have a mind of their own.  They call themselves "C.O.P.S."  Sam and Max use C.O.P.S. to call Stinky on her cellphone, and Sam convinces her to leave the restaurant so that she can meet up with "S" at a mysterious location.  After Stinky leaves the diner, Sam and Max enter the diner and snoop around.  Sam finds a button behind the counter of the diner.  Sam presses the button and one of the tables in the diner turns into a platform.  Sam and Max get on the platform and go underground.  Once underground, they find a dilapidated subway system with junk strew all about.  Sam and Max begin looking around and find a piece of old useless technology.  They recognize that C.O.P.S. might be interested in acquiring a new member, so Sam puts the scanner in his inventory.  After removing the scanner, Sam and Max discover Momma Bosco's Power Core.  Sam also takes this with him.  After Sam and Max obtain Momma Bosco's Power Core, they make their way back to the Desoto, where they surprise C.O.P.S. with a new scanner.  They are thrilled with their new addition to the team. 
  
At this point Sam and Max make their way to Momma Bosco's new location on the other side of town.  Once inside, they find an annoying moleman.  The moleman tries to convince Sam and Max that he is the only medium that they can use to contact Momma Bosco.  That turns out to be obviously false, as Momma Bosco tells the moleman to stop the act.  The defeated and unemployed moleman retracts from the situation as Sam and Max begin talking to Momma Bosco.  Interestingly, Momma Bosco is a ghost; she is currently in the process of trying to create a machine that will open a portal so that she transfer herself from the ghost dimension to the dimension where she is a living being.  After ending the conversation with Momma Bosco, Sam and Max decide to talk to the moleman.
 

Characters

 
CharactersEpisode Bio/Synopsis
           
                  Sam
 
      
                Max
 
          
     General Skun-ka'pe
   
           
              Stinky
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

PC Requirements 

  • Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista
  • Processor: 2.0 Ghz or better (3 GHz Pentium® 4 or equivalent recommended)
  • Memory: 512 MB RAM (1GB recommended)
  • Hard Disk Space: 310 MB
  • Video Card: 64 MB DirectX® 8.1 compliant video card (128 MB recommended)
  • Sound Card: DirectX® 8.1 sound device
  • DirectX® Version: DirectX® Version 9.0c or better (DirectX updater included)
  • Controller Support: Yes    
  • No internet connection required to play