Tales of Monkey Island Episode 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is a fantastic game. TellTale’s pedigree in the adventure game field is by now very well established, with the great Sam & Max games, the Strong Bad episodes and Wallace & Gromit’s first episode soon to draw to a conclusion. What’s even better is that much of the same programming team and voice cast that made the original Monkey Island games great are working on this too.
Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate, is in a bit of trouble – his wife Elaine is held hostage by the dreaded zombie pirate LeChuck, and only an enchanted cutlass can save the day. Fortunately Guybrush has just such an enchanted cutlass... unfortunately, being him, things don’t quite´go according to plan and he ends up with a demon hand, a human LeChuck, and himself stranded on Flotsam Island without a ship. Still, that doesn’t really matter, since the winds all blow inwards so no-one who lands on the island can escape...
With a great plot that pays homage to the original Monkey Island games while being unique in its own right, Tales of Monkey Island Episode One also benefits from some great puzzles including combining inventory items (the one notable disappointment of the Sam & Max episodes was the lack of these) and bucketloads of humour. There are lots of in-jokes for fans of the Monkey Island games, but also plenty for newcomers to enjoy, including lots of pop culture references. This makes it one of those rare games that’s almost as much fun to watch as to play. In fact you may find yourself repeating actions even though you know they won’t achieve anything just to watch what happens again.
The voice acting is superb, the music’s great and the colourful, detailed visuals suit the game perfectly. The 3D environment, which somehow didn’t quite work in Escape from Monkey Island, is perfect here. So, it plays great, it looks great, it sounds great... what else do you need to know?
Well, I guess you’ll want to know about the interface. Interfaces in adventure games are invariably a thorny subject for PC gamers if any company dares to do something a bit different to the traditional fully mouse-controlled system that we know and love. For the Tales of Monkey Islands games, TellTale have adopted a hybrid system – you can use solely the mouse, though controlling Guybrush’s movements is a little tricky if you do. You get used to it surprisingly quickly, but in some puzzles which require a lot of specific movements, you’ll probably end up using the keyboard. Otherwise you’ll only need the keyboard for accessing the menu (escape) or getting Guybrush to run (shift). All in all, not quite perfect but a very acceptable interface.
The other thing you should know about Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is that it’s pretty long for an episode game. I’m not quite sure but it seemed longer than any of the Sam & Max episodes; certainly you get a lot more gameplay for your money than with the Wallace & Gromit episodes.
All in all, this is a very, very promising start to the first season of Tales of Monkey Island.
Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate, is in a bit of trouble – his wife Elaine is held hostage by the dreaded zombie pirate LeChuck, and only an enchanted cutlass can save the day. Fortunately Guybrush has just such an enchanted cutlass... unfortunately, being him, things don’t quite´go according to plan and he ends up with a demon hand, a human LeChuck, and himself stranded on Flotsam Island without a ship. Still, that doesn’t really matter, since the winds all blow inwards so no-one who lands on the island can escape...
With a great plot that pays homage to the original Monkey Island games while being unique in its own right, Tales of Monkey Island Episode One also benefits from some great puzzles including combining inventory items (the one notable disappointment of the Sam & Max episodes was the lack of these) and bucketloads of humour. There are lots of in-jokes for fans of the Monkey Island games, but also plenty for newcomers to enjoy, including lots of pop culture references. This makes it one of those rare games that’s almost as much fun to watch as to play. In fact you may find yourself repeating actions even though you know they won’t achieve anything just to watch what happens again.
The voice acting is superb, the music’s great and the colourful, detailed visuals suit the game perfectly. The 3D environment, which somehow didn’t quite work in Escape from Monkey Island, is perfect here. So, it plays great, it looks great, it sounds great... what else do you need to know?
Well, I guess you’ll want to know about the interface. Interfaces in adventure games are invariably a thorny subject for PC gamers if any company dares to do something a bit different to the traditional fully mouse-controlled system that we know and love. For the Tales of Monkey Islands games, TellTale have adopted a hybrid system – you can use solely the mouse, though controlling Guybrush’s movements is a little tricky if you do. You get used to it surprisingly quickly, but in some puzzles which require a lot of specific movements, you’ll probably end up using the keyboard. Otherwise you’ll only need the keyboard for accessing the menu (escape) or getting Guybrush to run (shift). All in all, not quite perfect but a very acceptable interface.
The other thing you should know about Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is that it’s pretty long for an episode game. I’m not quite sure but it seemed longer than any of the Sam & Max episodes; certainly you get a lot more gameplay for your money than with the Wallace & Gromit episodes.
All in all, this is a very, very promising start to the first season of Tales of Monkey Island.
Rating: 9/10 + Mega-Monkey Bonus!
CaptainD - PC Gaming Blog
CaptainD - PC Gaming Blog
1 comments:
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