Arrrrr! Is that a new episode I be spyin’?
With such a tense ending to the first episode of Telltale’s new Tales of Monkey Island game series, I was eagerly anticipating the release of the second episode. Thankfully I’ve finally managed to calm down a little and it’s actually sunk in that the monkey island franchise has been revived – meaning that hopefully this review will be a little less biased.
For those of you who aren’t in the know, Lucasarts & Telltale games have got together to collaborate on reviving the classic Monkey Island franchise of adventure games. The games are being released episodically, one every month for 5 months. This is episode 2 – I’ll link to the other episodes reviews at the bottom of this page.
This game continues from where the first episode left off, with Guybrush on his newly acquired ship with an unknown character’s sword at his throat, and Elaine on a ship apparently falling for a human LeChuck.
The gameplay should be familiar to anyone who has played either a monkey island or telltale game before
So it turns out that the sword belongs to Morgan LeFlay, a devious pirate hunter (and Guybrush’s biggest fan) who has been hired by the Marquis De Singe to capture Guybrush’s cursed hand so that the Marquis can dissect & study it. Also in this episode, Guybrush is challenged with gathering the necessary summoning artefacts used to summon the legendary sea creatures who will lead him to the cure for the pirate curse he has caused, but another pirate is also trying to extort the artefacts from the chieftain of the Jerkbait Islands.
This leads me quite nicely into the setting. The Jerkbait Islands are (white fairly small) well designed, and there’s none of telltale’s usual location recycling, or at least none that I noticed. A few of the character models are quite obviously re-used, but with the time restraints that Telltale have, it’s understandable.
The gameplay should be familiar to anyone who has played either a monkey island or telltale game before, and while the click to drag movement is frustrating at the best of times, the keyboard movement is much smoother and makes the character much easier to control. A gripe I still have is that the inventory system seems over complicated – rather than simply clicking one object onto another to attempt to combine them, both items must be placed in a dedicated combining interface, which just seems ultimately unnecessary. Another slight gripe I had was that the script includes far too many references to the previous games, and even the previous episode. There are obviously classic lines which have been carried through all of the games (“You fight like a cow”, the three headed monkey distraction & Guybrush’s ability to hold his breath for 10 minutes for example), but it seems that Telltale are throwing these kinds of reference in every few minutes, just to achieve a quick laugh.
Otherwise, the scripting & voice acting are good, and I’m still glad that the original voice actors for Guybrush & Elaine have returned for this game, and LeChuck’s voice acting is close enough to the original to be forgiven for a few indescrepancies.
The graphics are also fairly well done, and suit the game’s style well, without being too cartoony.
Overall, while the game still has a few teething problems, and is still apparently finding its feet, and while the game is shorter than the first episode, it’s still definitely worth a play. Make sure though that you play the first episode before moving on to this, as the episodes are NOT self contained – so you will struggle to pick up the storyline from this point.
Episode 1: www.yetanotherreviewsite.co.uk/tales-of-monkey-island-launch-reviews~672~PC.htm
Episode 2: –
Episode 3:
Episode 4:
Episode 5:
The Bad: Shorter than the first game, Over use of references to previous games, overly complex inventory system.
Silver Y Award