Tales of Monkey Island Episode 03: Lair of the Leviathan Review (PC)

Murray?

Following on from the previous episode Guybrush finds himself trapped inside a giant manatee. Without spoiling too much – this episode will see you in a quiz show type situation playing for your life, performing rites of passage for a secret brotherhood, encountering an old friend, possessing other characters using voodoo & trying to convince a giant female manatee to go on a date, amongst other things.

This is no reason for it not to be in your collection

The graphics are fairly good, and suit the game’s style well, and the environments particularly stand out in this episode as being a slight departure from the similarly styled environments of the previous two episodes. I was slightly disappointed to find yet more re-used character models, but in Telltale’s defence, they were less obvious than in previous episodes – and I realise they have time restrictions to contend with, but after waiting so long for any news on a follow up to monkey island 4, I would be happy wait a little longer between episodes if it meant a better quality of game.

Fans will be pleased to see the reappearance of a familiar face (or head at least!) in this episode – a welcome inclusion in my opinion, which I did expect Telltale to get to eventually. This brings about some fun moments & recollections from previous games for fans to look out for.

Voice acting is as I would expect – top notch, with the characters all being convincing and sounding different enough from each other – despite some of the same voice actors being used for multiple roles.. The game’s music is fairly minimal, but fits will with the action. It might be nice if the music is brought to the forefront a little more in future episodes, as it helps add to the epic feel that the games are known for.

While this game is a welcome inclusion to the series – I feel that the episodic format has lead to the new games suffering with ‘Chinese Democracy Syndrome’ (coined!), whereby I had been waiting in anticipation for so long I had practically given up on ever seeing a new monkey island game – and while the episodes have all been good – they aren’t quite living up to my expectations now that they have finally arrived. This is no reason for it not to be in your collection however and I heartily recommend it, and the series to anyone who has a remote interest in adventure gaming. While the games do contain references to the older ‘Monkey Island’ games, they are still completely accessible to players who have not played the previous games (although I highly recommend getting your hands on the first four monkey island games if you get a chance). Well worth playing.