Tales of Monkey Island
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Publisher: Telltale Games Genre(s): Action / Adventure Home Page: http://www.telltalegames.com/monke...
Tales of Monkey IslandTales of Monkey Island is an episodic game in five parts. The review is based on the first part, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, and the following four episodes are due to arrive at the rate of one episode per month. As far as I can tell there is no way to purchase the episodes separately - you'll need to subscribe to all five in one go. As it took me roughly five hours to complete the first episode the $35 price point offers good value for over 20 hours of game play. PlotReviewing an adventure game without giving away the plot is a bit tricky but here goes; As with every Monkey Island game, the story begins with our hero Guybrush Threepwood gets separated from his darling wife Elaine (possibly into the clutches of his arch-nemesis, the evil/zombie/ghost pirate LeChuck) and gets dumped on an island with nothing but his wits. Oh, and his left hand is infected with the Pox of LeChuck, giving it a (un)life of its own. To add insult to injury, the wind on the island always blows toward inland, making it impossible for any ship to leave - not that he has one.
As the episode title suggest, the whole game is spent on obtaining a ship and being able to set sail to the high seas in search of Elaine. This limits the game to one island and to a fairly small amount of locations to visit. This, again, is not unfamiliar to fans of the series - the games have always been divided into sections in which the activity is usually limited to a fairly small area. In an adventure game this is desirable to avoid unnecessary travel from location to location to in order to try an idea. The island of Flotsam has just a beach, the docks with five houses and a tempting ship, the requisite jungle maze and six or so locations around the island that are revealed as the story progresses. Personally I would have liked a bit more locations to visit, but the amount of places that are relevant at a given time has been well planned out. There's very little of aimless wandering around, trying to figure out exactly where and what to do to move forward. Game MechanicsOn movement, the time of "click where you want to go" is gone, replaced by standard WASD type of movement. Interestingly enough the game tutorial section tells you to move with the mouse - hold down a mouse button and move the mouse where you go. While this is possible, it is also perhaps the most horrible movement mechanism ever invented. The WASD movement does the trick well enough, though sometimes required a bit of wrangling due to the games static camera angles. Further down the adventure, you will start wishing that Guybrush would walk a bit faster too. The puzzles by and large feel "monkeyish" enough, and while are fairly easy do give a feel of accomplishment when figured out. This is greatly helped by the new single-click interface. Whereas before you were able to interact with an object with up to 10 different ways (pick up, talk to, push, pull etc.), now you just click on an item and Guybrush does what is appropriate. While it does make puzzle solving easier, I love this. No more trying to figure out that you need to "talk to" a balloon to suck up the helium from it to give you a high voice. The (unfortunately) requisite maze section is annoying but not as much as in earlier games of the series - bonus points for the developers for the "bling" sound given when you follow the right path, giving you immediate feedback on whether you are still on the right path.  The inventory is fairly small and the game design makes sure that you will not need more than a few items at a time What is entirely missing is the grind from the originals - from the excellent (but at least on the second play-thru, really annoying) Insult Sword-fighting to the absolutely horrible Monkey Fight. Good riddance. Adding game length by requiring players to spend time collecting stuff before being able to move forward is so last century - except, of course, in World of Warcraft. Item handling in the inventory view is a bit more traditional - you are given an option to examine an item closer or use it, if it can be used. You can also attempt to combine two items into one. Most of the time you will be going into the inventory to attempt to use an item on an interactive object. Here the game stumbles. While in theory the game could be intuitive enough that you will never face a situation where you just attempt to use all available items on an object, it is more than likely that at least once or twice during the course of the adventure you do exactly this. And even more common is that you attempt to use two or three items. The inventory system is sluggish in this - open inventory, choose item, close inventory, click on object, repeat. At the very least the last chosen item should remain selected until unselected with a right-click.
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