Tales of Monkey Island: Lair of the Leviathan releases today for the PC and shortly after for the Nintendo Wii. This is the third episode in the series and if you haven’t seen my reviews for the previous two, you’ll want to check those out now. As to be expected, I greatly enjoyed Lair of the Leviathan, just as I enjoyed the previous two. So here is a quick update and review of what you should expect when you download your copy for this month.
As with the previous episodes, the story of Tales of Monkey Island, hell, of all of the Monkey Island games is what keeps you hooked and wanting to play more. Recall from The Siege of Spinner Cay that Guybrush had just departed from his wife Elaine to continue his quest to find La Esponja Grande to cure the voodoo pox that he had released upon the Carribean. Morgan La’Flay, the pirate bounty hunter, had just made her way onto his ship and was about to capture him when out of the blue they were swallowed by a giant Manatee.
Inside the Manatee, Guybrush finds that famed explorer and boyfriend to the voodoo lady, de’Cava, has been here for years with his pirate crew, as if you recall, they were also looking for La Esponja Grande. To escape, you’ve got to win the respect of the crew, run all kinds of errands, solve several puzzles and just have a great time along the way. Things get even crazier in true Monkey Island fashion as you continue your journey, and of course the end of the episode is plagued with a cliffhanger.
Lair of the Leviathan should take you between 4 and 5 hours to complete. The puzzles are right on par with the previous episodes in terms of difficulty. The environments in the level look great as you will travel through the mouth and ear of the manatee and the bile filled stomach area. There is of course some open seas sailing and you’ll even get to go underwater for a portion of this episode. Something that caught me off guard was the ability to play as the Voodoo Lady for a short period of time as well, but I won’t go into the details of the events.
It seems that each episode gives you something new to try out in terms of game play. This episode has a lot of dialog and of course a lot of comedy, but you will focus on memory games in the form of trivia and trial and error. But the best new game play mechanic was the facial expressions game, where you have to make the scariest and meanest looking pirate scowl. You’ll pick up new facial expressions as you discover them throughout the episode, and combining them together to solve puzzles is just hilarious. All of the game play mechanics of the previous episodes are also represented including using items on the environment and combining items to form something more useful.
The environment in Lair of the Leviathan is beautiful, even if it is mostly inside the body parts of a Giant Manatee. Hell, having lived inside there for years, these pirates are rather resourceful considering they’ve managed to build themselves a nice little utopian bar complete with beer bong, tiki lamps and bongo drums.
The voice acting of characters again are wonderful, especially the stoner/surfer/partier or whatever other stereotype you want to apply to this guy.
If you haven’t picked this series up yet, it’s $35 for all 5 episodes at TellTale.com or 1000 points per episode on Nintendo WiiWare. Recall that if you purchase the PC version, upon release of the final episode, a collector’s edition box and DVD will be shipped to you for only the cost of the shipping. Lair of the Leviathan continues everything that was great in the first two episodes and sets you right up for the fourth. I absolutely can’t wait for The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood. If hilarious adventure puzzle-solving games are your forte, you are wrong if you have not been following this series.
