Tales of Monkey Island continues the zany adventures of Guybrush Threepwood, who carries voodoo swords in one hand and root beer in the other!
Telltale Games is a company famous for making the new wave of adventure games including the Sam and Max games and Wallace and Grommit. Monkey Island is one of the most famous adventure game series of all time. What happens when you put the two together? Last year, we got to find out when Tales of Monkey Island, a 5-part episodic game that Telltale made to carry on the Monkey Island torch. Does it live up to the Monkey Island legacy? I finally got a chance to check it out. Hit the jump for my impressions through the first two episodes.
First things first: each episode took me about three to four hours, meaning all five episodes are probably about a 15-18 hour investment overall. At $35 for the entire series, it’s a pretty good deal. Without going into details, I can say that if you enjoy adventure games Tales of Monkey Island is well worth the money. If that’s not enough for you, read on.
For the uninitiated, the Monkey Island series follows the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate™ and his wife Elaine Marley. His arch-nemesis is the ghost pirate LeChuck, whose goal in…unlife…is to take Elaine Marley as his ghost bride. In Tales of Monkey Island, Guybrush becomes infected with a pox that is becoming an epidemic – the pox basically starts turning good pirates into evil pirates. Meanwhile, LeChuck has become human due to some reverse voodoo mumbo jumbo. INTRIGUE! Throw a mad scientist determined to dedicate Guybrush’s body to the pursuit of knowledge and a swashbuckling pirate bounty hunter and Tales of Monkey Island has a recipe for success.
Telltale has done a great job of replicating the quirky puzzles and humor of the previous installments in the series. Adventure games are all about solving puzzles, and the Monkey Island series has always featured some of the most random and nonsensical solutions. While you won’t be using a rubber chicken attached to a pulley to solve any puzzles, there are a lot of great gags. It may not be AS creative as the original Monkey Islands, but Telltale has come pretty darn close.
Humor-wise, the game is great. There are some jokes that arouse a slight chuckle and some genuine lol moments. Telltale knows how to do zaniness (see: Sam and Max), and that translates well to the Monkey Island license. At one point you are dealing with pox-infected pirates, while at another you are dealing with androgynous mer-people. The story is ridiculous and that is what makes it awesome.
If you can’t tell, I’m totally loving Tales of Monkey Island right now. It’s a great change of pace to the shooters I’m usually spending most of my time with, and as a bonus, my wife even likes the game (as much as any wife can like any video game). I can’t imagine the game dropping off in quality in the last 3 episodes, so if you are going on a roadtrip and need something to play on your laptop or want to try something new, I highly advise checking this out. Maybe you’ll even learn the secret of Monkey Island! (OK, I’ll tell you the secret now: The secret is that Monkey Island is awesome).
