Armchair Diplomat

Guybrush approves of your online purchase

“Ballsy” is a word that could be used when announcing to the world that you’re making a new sequel for one of the gaming community’s all time favourite games.  “Smart buisness sense” is also an applicable phrase.  Whichever way you look at it, the amount of excitement that has surrounded this title since it’s announcement has been palpable, and the game itself hasn’t disappointed.

In Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, players take control of Guybrush Threepwood once again.  It’s nice to see that not that much has changed.  We join Guybrush as he catches up to the dread pirate LeChuck, who has kidnapped Elaine and plans to sacrifice thirteen monkeys in a voodoo ritual.  After some voodoo that you do (that you do do so well), the boat explodes and sends Guybrush drifting alone to Flotsam Island.  Flotsam Island’s peculiar weather means that the wind is always blowing toward the centre of the island, meaning that no-one can sail away.  In Launch of the Screaming Narwhal you have to work out a way to get off the island.

Oh, and you’ll also discover that due to a little voodoo mis-cue, your hand is now possessed by the Pox of LeChuck, and has a mind of it’s own.

Tales of Monkey Island is presented in 3D, in a similar style to that of Telltale’s Sam and Max games.  Guybrush seems to still be incapable of recovering his epic beard from LeChuck’s Revenge, but looks much improved from his Escape from Monkey Island incarnation.  The new landscapes look great, and seem to capture the feel of their 2D predecessors.  The music has been freshly recorded, but still maintains the rather soft MIDI-style themes of the previous games.

Your playing window is kept clean except for your tucked away inventory

There’s obviously a lot of effort taken to allow the player to feel familiar with the game.  Traditional in-jokes (Guybrush’s disgust for porcelain), genre jokes (Chuck the Plant appears on LeChuck’s ship) and familiar puzzles (multi-directional treasure hunts) all help remind the gamer that this is still the same franchise they fell in love with way back when.  This was where having Ron Gilbert as “Visiting Professor of Monkeyology” must have come in handy for Telltale Games.  But for some reason I can’t pick, updated 3D Guybrush simply can’t mug to the camera as well as old 2D Guybrush (must have been the vacant pixel eyes), but the dialogue is still snappy and there’s a lot of fantastic voice work to enjoy.  Dominic Armato provides the strong, solid, likeable Guybrush he’s given us ever since Monkey Island 3, and I’m sure this game will only go to ensure the fact that he won’t be replaced any time soon.

Puzzle-wise, you won’t find anything too challenging here.  Some will take a fair amount of try, try again, but certainly nothing outrageously non-sequitur, which is a good starting level for newbies and old fans alike.  I’m hoping they ramp the difficulty up on a couple of episodes along the way, because a few situations seemed a little too quick to solve (which cuts down on your game time, of course).  If you’re feeling the pressure however, you can opt to up the frequency of the verbal hints Guybrush will occasionally muse out loud.

Visit meteorologically challenged Flotsam Island! (Roaming insulting pirates not included)

The game suffers a few little features I didn’t enjoy.  Mouse movement has been changed from “click where you want to walk” and replaced with “hold a drag the direction you want to move”.  For someone with a limited mouse pad space (don’t even get me started on the touchpad experience), I played almost the entire game using the keyboard movement controls.  This wasn’t too bad, but since I’m nitpicking already, adventure games are supposed to be a relaxing bare bones input, rather than a FPS keyboard and mouse affair.

The new item combination system is a little tedious too, and was definitely on my nerves during a few puzzles.  If a combination doesn’t work, it should remove itself quickly (if not immediately) rather than give a little animatic.  Again, I’m picking the tiniest of nits here.

Guybrush has yet to reclaim his mighty LeChuck's Revenge beard

The game will probably take you around five hours to complete, so it’s not exceptionally, but you’ll enjoy it so much that the wait for the next episode is going to feel FAR longer.  I’m sad to say that there probably isn’t a great deal of replay value with this title, apart from maybe going back to find any amusing dialogue you may have missed.  It probably WILL see a lot of replay at the hands of your friends however (I’ve already got two asking to come around and play it), which is continuing a fine and long standing tradition of the adventure genre anyway.

Long story short, you’ll love this game for the kid in you who grew up with Monkey Island.  Short story long, anything by Dickens.  If by some chance you haven’t grown up on the games (my heart goes out to you poor folk) now is a fantastic time to become aquainted.  Especially with Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition being released on the 15th, and Lucasart’s singular minded urge to dump their entire back catalogue on Steam.

Only one reference to Murray in this game too, but I’ve got my fingers crossed for the next episode!

The verdict:

Pros: A familiar feel, without just rehashing old content.  Frequently amusing, good level of challenge to the puzzles.

Cons: Not much replay value.  Slightly short, so if you’re digging it you’ll want to have ordered the entire season.

Overall score: 4 out of 5.  Heck, it’s Monkey Island, what more do you want?  The next episode is what.  Purchasing the entire season won’t set you back too much, so maybe you should head over to Telltale Games’ site to take a look.