Armchair Diplomat

OK, I'll admit it, I came

Hot off the LucasArts Twitter feed today, most likely in conjunction with some variety of GDC announcement, comes the news that The Secret of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge will be undergoing the Special Edition treatment that we all drooled over previously.  There ain’t much to it, but here’s the word for word:

Oh yeah, another thing: LeChucks Revenge: Special Edition is official! New puzzles, new enemies, new hair!

-LucasArtsGames, just forewarning my wallet

So that’s another $15 or so that I’ll be giving LucasArts unquestioningly.

But there’s something that has me confused.  Maybe it’s just a poor choice of wording, but this tweet would appear to suggest that new puzzle elements are going to be included into the game, something I don’t think I’d be so keen on.  Part of the beauty of the original Monkey Islnds: Special Edition was that it was a straight port, preserving the original game for a newer generation.

They’ve also posted up a (somewhat blurry) photo of the game’s new cover art, feel free to ogle.  I guess we can all feel assured that in that photo we can clearly spy a (somewhat blurry) beard on Guybrush.

Update: LucasArts have also opened the game’s official website, which sports some great looking in-game screenshots.

Also also, apparently I’m not the only person to start bitching and moaning raising genuine concern about the “new puzzles” phrase.  Since the announcement above they’ve fielded a flurry of questions and decided to put all of us at ease:

[New puzzles?] … not new for Monkey 2, I just know how all of you reacted to the first Special Editons Hair

Good to hear, because any change to Monkey Island 2 would be like callously beating my childhood with a frozen cactus.

… Metaphorically I mean.

… Probably.

LeChuck looks like he dropped a triple word score

Waking up after being buried alive in a coffin is certainly one of those iconic nightmares that can make even capsule hotel guests shiver with claustrophobic disgust.  The very idea is enough to trigger a one-inch punch training montage in most people.

Spare a thought then for poor Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate, because this is exactly where you’ll begin Rise of the Pirate God, the final episode in Telltale Games’ Tales of Monkey Island.  It’s a little unsettling for long-term Guybrush fans, as up until his betrayal at the hands of LeChuck (again), he’s always had something of an unkillable complex.  And sure enough, true to form, you’ll soon discover that just because he’s been stabbed through the heart is no reason he can’t make his way back to the land of the living.

Pirate afterlife isn’t so bad.  There’s a treasure under every X, and you’re free to fight and steal to your heart’s content.  Guybrush, however, can only concentrate of Elaine.  So after a little exploration, meeting up with some old friends and making some new ones, you’ll discover that making your way back from the land of the dead isn’t as hard as it might sound.  After all, LeChuck treats the place a revolving door.  So after a little voodoo that you do (that you do do so well), Guybrush manages to tear a hole in the Crossroads that allows his ghost passage back into the land of the living.

Unfortunately, the newly ripped portal delivers LeChuck everything he’s ever wanted on a silver platter, as he can now use Esponge Grande to draw voodoo straight out of the afterlife.  Sponge thoroughly wedged, LeChuck gains almost infinite power, and so begins his rule as the Pirate God.  And an undead Guybrush is the last obstacle between LeChuck and world domination.

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Yes, Guybrush DOES get executed this episode

Colour me suitably impressed (which I believe is somewhere around a lush olive green). Avid readers may have noticed that for all the previous episodes of Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island, I’ve been slightly thrown off by the erratic puzzles vs. plot scale. Previous episodes in the series have had a difficult time managing to hit the sweet spot that allows puzzles to be both plot driven and challenging at the same time. Make something too plot driven and it becomes too easy, as a puzzle’s possible outcomes dwindle and characters start bludgeoning you with obvious verbal “signposts” for the solution. Make a puzzle too random, and you’ll have your audience tearing out their hair and flocking to a walkthrough.

Which is why, to my great delight, I’m impressed to find out that The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood consistently delivers just the right level of difficulty to puzzles that actively move the storyline along.

After being knocked out and returned to Flotsam Island by Morgan LeFlay, Guybrush is summarily arrested by the Pirate Court before he is able to be handed over for disection by the Marquis DeSinge. His elation at escaping certain death is short lived, however, when he discovers that failing to defend himself against a series of nautical accusations will also result in certain death.

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Now with character closure!

Knights of the Old Republic II was a deeply flawed game. Legend has it the developers were pushed to release the game in time for the holiday season and as a result giant chunks of plot, missions, even entire worlds were left out of the game and it was riddled with bugs.

I played (or should that be suffered?) through the original version once, sent Matt a text immediately afterwards saying “OMFG worst ending EVAR!”, then uninstalled the game and tried never to think about it again. Little did I know, however, that others reached the end and instead of sending derisive text messages they decided they could improve the game. Now there are dozens of third party mods and patches for the game which do everything from improving its graphics to resurrecting missions that were cut from the original to … uh … making the characters wear less clothes. Bless you, shut in programmers!

The most complete effort to date has just been released in beta format – the TSL Restored Content Mod v1.4. Snappy title, huh? It won’t litter the game with n00dz and it won’t make your lightsaber any bigger, but what it will attempt to do is restore all the bits of plot that were cut from the original game.

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Before you ask, no, it's not a child's retelling of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds"

Well I hope you’re happy, LucasArts.  You’ve managed to make me love a game that simultaneously depresses me!

Lucidity is a side-scrolling puzzle game, where players must guide a small girl named Sofi through a series of dreams.  What will immediately grab you about the game is it’s style.  The best way I can describe it would be to say that the characters and levels are constructed much like a paper collage, using a blend of different colour and textured materials.  It’s kind of difficult to describe, but if you take a look at a few screenshots you’ll see what I mean.  This, along with the game’s painfully sweet soundtrack, creates a definite artistic tone, which tells you that you’re once again in “thinking game” territory.

Actually you could probably consider Lucidity to be amongst the same calibre of game as Braid.  While the puzzles aren’t exactly on the same level, the two games both use a pronounced artistic style and slowly revealing plot to engage the player.  In Lucidity’s case, the game makes use of the innocence of childhood to tackle larger and darker ideas.  As Sofi progresses through her dream, the plot bookends each level.  A stage begins with a page of Sofi’s diary, where each level we’re told a little more about the girl herself.  Then when she reaches the end of a stage, she recieves postcards from her Nana, who delights in her childlike curiosity and sense of adventure.

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Exasperated query: Can I finally have my mission now?

Remember those good times back in 2005 when you were playing through Knights Of The Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords?  Remember how you thought the game was really well made, had a compelling plot and interesting party mechanics?  Then remember how the game all went to shit because it had a forced ending that tied up nothing at all and gave you a four second light side/dark side cut scene?

KotOR 2’s development team, Obsidian, had basically been pressured into a rushed release for the Christmas period and because of this, by the time you reached it’s conclusion, there were gaping plot holes and a load of missing character development.

Well four years later, you might actually be able to play through sections of the game the way they were originally intended.  This is all thanks to the efforts of a couple of modders by the names of Zbyl2 and DarthStoney who’ve made it their business to restore the game’s cut content.  Among the elements removed from the game was practically the entirety of HK-47’s story arc, which you could never get enough influence to investigate through the regular course of the game.

The mod has now entered open beta status for everyone to poke and prod at.  The Deadly Stream forums contain everything you need to know about installing the patch and mod.  For obvious reasons, this will only mod the PC version of the game, so all you poor chumps who played it on Xbox like I did may have to buy another copy of the game if you want to try it out.

If you want to see some of what’s waiting for you, you can check out the trailers on YouTube.  I’ll probably get my brother to check this out for me, since not only does he own the PC version, but he recently played through the game for the first time too.  It’s far easier to heal a freah wound, after all.  I look forward to hearing the results, we may very well have to do a write-up for it.

Cheers for the heads up, Eurogamer!

I suppose there are worse ways to travel

It’s a new month, and a new installment of Tales Of Monkey Island! The last episode, The Siege of Spinner Cay, ended with Guybrush being swallowed whole by a giant manatee. So it won’t surprise you to find out that you’ll be spending most of the new episode, Lair of the Leviathan, attempting to find your way out.

The hunt for Esponge Grande is not without it’s twists and turns, it would seem.  Conveniently swallowed by the manatee is adventurer and explorer Coronado De Cava, who is also hunting the voodoo soaking sponge, even if only to offer it as a surprise present for the Voodoo Lady.  After Guybrush gives De Cava the locket the Voodoo Lady entrusted to him, De Cava automatically assumes he has romantic competition.  Realising he needs De Cava’s help, Guybrush is forced to pretend Morgan LeFlay is his wife to allay suspicion.  After a little familiarisation session (held while dangling in cages over the cavernous entrance to the manatee’s stomach) De Cava accepts Guybrush isn’t interested in the Voodoo Lady and agrees to help him.  The sponge itself is hidden at the Sacred Manatee Breeding Grounds, where the manatee Guybrush has been swallowed by is headed.  However the manatee has lost it’s way after having it’s cochlea stolen, so not only does Guybrush have to find a way out of the manatee, he also has to fix it first.

Sounds logical, doesn’t it?

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Ahh for simpler days...

Today’s the big day, folks, time to get your next dose of Tales of Monkey Island.  The new chapter, Lair of the Leviathan, is now available to download through the Telltale Games website.

I’m looking forward to catching up and seeing what Murray’s been up to, and we’ll have a review up and ready to go within the week!

If you’d like to check out what we thought of the previous chapters, you can chould out our Launch of the Screaming Narwhal review here, and Siege of Spinner Cay review here.  Here’s hoping they’ve bumped up the length and difficulty a smidge this installment.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a manatee’s stomach to escape!

So what happens when you combine the sensationalism of investigative journalism, Monkey Island and bored Argentinian trolls? You get the stunning revelation that Grog is a real drink, and won’t somebody think of the children?!?

In a report that has kept gamers chuckling all day, an Argentinan program recently ran an expose on the latest and most awful trend to sweep through the children of today: drinking Grog. The reporter came upon this shocking news after a lot of quality research (read: trawling Facebook), and hit upon a group where suggestions for drinks were being shared amongst teenagers. One of those suggestions, presumably for a bored laugh, was the SCUMM Bar’s classic recipie for Grog.

Missing the point entirely, this then went to air as a shocking report of what those no good kids are up to these days, much to the mirth of everyone with even a single strain of gamer DNA. To quote a YouTube comment: “mas GRANDE trolleo”. And it shouldn’t take much to guess what that means in Spanish.

Has anyone checked in to see if Jeff Goldblum is still alive, by the way? He tends to get in mortal danger around these kind of situations.

Just take a look at the video, it is beyond classic. You can only weep joyously and applaud at the combination of half-arsed trolling and half-arsed journalism that birthed this lol-cano. It’s bought joy to thousands of gamer lunch breaks.

Oh, and this just in!

In related news, a disturbing report that around the globe children are taking to using Genki Dama (or “Spirit Bombs”) to resolve their differences in the playground. The highly destructive fighting move is characterised by standing still, holding both your arms straight up in the air and screaming at the top of your lungs for hours on end.

The practice has earned the condemnation of environmental and parental groups world-wide, who claim that draining chi from lifeforms surrounding you is a dangerous and anti-social act. If you or anyone you know uses Spirit Bombs, even simply for recreation, please consult a councellor.

See to me, I think even this is too flashy

Here’s one I missed from around a week back. Apparently in a recent podcast interview with Total PC Gaming, Telltale Games’ director of design Dave Grossman mused pointedly at the idea of resurrecting LucasArts’ adventure classic LOOM.

Many people were overjoyed with the idea of seeing one of their childhood classics back on the scene. Others, like me, are a little more skeptical about the idea. Here’s a transcripted section of the interview:

The one I always think about these days is Loom actually, and how ahead of it’s time it was. I think the problem with it at the time was that it was only two and a half hours long and now I find myself deliberately trying to design games that are only two and a half hours long. So I think … well, why not do that?

-Dave Grossman, raider of the Lucas Arts

Now I loved LOOM. It’s unique design and gameplay made it one of the greatest adventure games ever to come out of the then LucasFilm stable. But something about creating it’s sequels doesn’t seem right, at least in my mind.

To me, the charm of LOOM was in it’s simple design and basic yet rich VGA graphics. I’m probably in a small minority of people who thought that the CD-ROM version of the game actually spoiled the mood.

At the time of it’s original creation, LOOM’s creator Brian Moriarty did pen two sequels, even though actually producing them was “just talk”. Now it seems they might see the light of day, and only about twenty years after they were written. The sequels, called “Forge” and “The Fold“, revolved around the characters that Bobbin leaves behind after tearing the Pattern at the end of of the first game. Bobbin then acts in an advisory capacity, helping his stranded friends to fight against Chaos, who still retains control over half of the original Pattern.

It would be a big undertaking for Telltale, if they were to go ahead with it. While the first game is essentially aimed at a family friendly level, it also contained more of an adult feel than the carefree, laugh-along examples provided by Monkey Island and Sam and Max. So could Telltale take on something that is both funny but deep at the same time? It’d break away from their body of work so far, it’s true, but it’s probably something that the team would relish the challenge of.

If they could accomplish it, then the only remaining hurdle would be convincing old-school weirdos like myself that it could live up to it’s predecessor!

Take a look at the interview article.