Back in the early 90s, my mom came home with a brand new 2x Sound Blaster CD-ROM drive and sound card combo packaged with a handful of games. Among those wonderful games was The Secret of Monkey Island, the first of many graphical adventure games that I’d get the pleasure to play through my life. At E3 this year, LucasArts announced their remake of The Secret of Monkey Island, which certainly got my attention. Alongside this wonderful news, TellTale games announced that they would be releasing a BRAND NEW Monkey Island game in the form of 5 monthly downloadable episodes. Tales of Monkey Island, as you would expect, puts you in the shoes of wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood, so lets take a look at his adventures. Here is Tales of Monkey Island: “Launch of the Screaming Narwhal!”
Being that adventure games usually don’t rely on intense action-packed combat, it’s important that their stories are captivating and grab your attention right from the start. Luckily, “The Screaming Narwhal” does just that. The story opens with Guybrush, chasing down his arch-nemesis undead pirate LeChuck, who as usual, has captured his wife Elaine and has begun to cast a violent voodoo pox all over the Caribbean.
All that Guybrush needs to do to stop LeChuck is to pour a bottle of ancient Voodoo Rootbeer on his sword and slay him once and for all. Of course, he fumbles this seemingly simple task up and turns LeChuck into a human and releases the Voodoo pox upon the open seas. After falling off of his pirate ship, Guybrush awakens on the shore of Flotstam Island, where the game really begins.
The main story of the game from this point is to figure out how to get off of Flotstam Island and get back to the Rock of Gelato to once and for all put an end to LeChuck and save Elaine. Along the way you will run into many interesting characters from an ex-pirate turned glass blower to a creepy old voodoo lady. The story is interesting and it keeps you anxious to see what is going to happen next! The first episode ends with GuyBrush acquiring a pirate ship for him to sail off and rescue his bride.
The Tales of Monkey Island is a 5 part monthly downloadable episodic game. You can purchase the game from TellTale.com for $35, which lets you download each episode once it is released. Each episode should take you around 4 hours to complete. A nice feature uncommon to many adventure games is a subtle hint system. If you are stuck walking around for a while not knowing what to do next, Guybrush will start speaking to himself saying things like: “Maybe I should look at this item for some clues.” The clues never tell you exactly what to do, but they certainly lead you in the right direction.
There is also a treasure hunt mini-game incorporated that is accessible from the main menu. The treasure hunt gives you a map and provides clues as to how to find some buried treasure. If you successfully find the treasure, the game will take you to a website where you will be given prizes such as downloadable wallpapers or avatars. The game will then give you a new map to find your next booty. With each new episode of the game, you will receive new treasure maps as well.
Adventure games like Monkey Island to me seem a bit dated by today’s gaming standards but I still really enjoyed playing “The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal.” You can control Guybrush with the arrow keys on your keyboard, or you drag the mouse to move him around. At first I found that these controls were kind of clunky and awkward, but I eventually got used to it.
As the nature of adventure games, to reach your end goal, you are going to have to solve a bunch of puzzles by interacting with items in your inventory, saying the right dialog to certain characters, and by exploring the world to look for clues and new items. One nice feature unique to the Monkey Island series is the fact that you don’t ever have to worry about dying or reaching a dead end by doing something wrong. If you make a mistake, there are no consequences and the story evolves a bit to let you try again.
There are many types of puzzles in the game to keep you interested and never bored. Several times you have to follow a map and figure out what it is telling you to do. Lots of times it is done by auditory clues like listening for a monkey to let you know you are going the right way. Other times you have to combine two items inside of your inventory to produce a result or to create a new item that can be used to solve additional puzzles.
TellTale Games is actually made up of several old LucasArts employees who have created several of the previous Monkey Island titles, so the art direction you can clearly see is reminiscent of the nostalgic games of the past. The graphics are very colorful and cartoony and really make the game fun to look at. There are tons of minor details throughout the environments that are just hilarious. TellTale has really created a great fictional and entertaining pirate world for you to enjoy.
The music in the game is fully orchestrated and is great, as it was created by Michael Land, who created the music for the previous games. The voice actors in Tales are actually really good. Finally a game where I actually enjoyed listening to the characters talk, and beyond that, they are hilarious, especially LeChuck. TellTale even developed a Lip Sync system that records the voice actors’ facial expressions, and implements them into the actual characters in the game!
I’m not a fan of episodic video games… At all… But I really enjoyed the first episode of Tales of Monkey Island, even though it only took me 5 hours to complete it. The cartoony graphics, funny pop culture references, and hilarious voice acting really kept me hooked. Everything that was great about the previous Monkey Island games is still intact in Tales. If you enjoy classic adventure games that play just how they are supposed to, and you can get over the fact that you have to wait several months to see how the entire story unfolds, then Tales of Monkey Island is certainly a title you should consider.
