Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 1 - Launch of the Screaming Narwhal (PC)

“Tales of Monkey Island, now in serialized form, is the latest attempt to bring adventure gaming back to the masses, and, perhaps equally important, back to LucasArts - although in this case, the actual work has been outsourced to Dave Grossman's...”

“Tales of Monkey Island, now in serialized form, is the latest attempt to bring adventure gaming back to the masses, and, perhaps equally important, back to LucasArts - although in this case, the actual work has been outsourced to Dave Grossman's Telltale Games, most famous for re-introducing Sam & Max to PCs everywhere.

This time even more in 3D than 2001's justly derided Escape from Monkey Island, ToMI's controls take some time getting used to. The mouse-only version where you pull your character with a ring interface isn't bad, but you just might end up with a cramped claw if you use it too much. There's a WSAD option for all those who think digitally maneuvering a 3D environment is a good idea, and there's a gamepad and mouse option for all those who have three hands. You may have guessed by now that none of them are particularly appropriate. Why can't I just point and click? Why can't I map the cursor to the right analog stick or cycle through hotspots with the shoulder buttons? Unfortunately, questions like these often occupied my mind more than the puzzles did.

It's not that the puzzles aren't fun at all - they're just not particularly challenging and sometimes solve themselves just by randomly exploring your environment, but that's not really a bad thing since I rarely have the patience to sit on a single puzzle for half an hour these days. It's a little disappointing when they get repetitive in such a short game, though (the map quests are particularly at fault here). Anyway, the weaker Sam & Max episodes had some not-so-great puzzles as well, but they were always saved by the excellent writing, so why shouldn't the same apply to Tales of Monkey Island?

I really don't know, all I know is it doesn't. It's not the story, I guess, since it's hardly present, though it does noticeably lack the general zaniness and inventiveness of the recent adventures of the Freelance Police. It's the dialogue, really. Maybe I'm just drawn to rapid-fire banter and snarky pop-culture observations while Monkey Island draws most of its jokes from Guybrush being a buffoon and from moderately clever puns. Maybe I'm just a bit tired of pirates and monkeys (as well as robots and ninjas, thank you Internet!). Whatever it is, a lot of the humor just didn't connect with me and even felt a little cringe-worthy at times. Guybrush's possessed hand slapping his own face after a particularly punny question was a highlight, and mostly because he really deserved it.

Speaking of Guybrush's face (transition, baby!), the whole art design is pretty hit-or-miss. The backgrounds are beautiful, and so are the principal characters. The bit players, however, look uninspired and bland. The same goes for most of the new score written by veteran Monkey Island-composer Michael Land (one track uses a sound that's a little too close to disconnecting a USB device for comfort), and while the old tunes received a nice do-over, there are too many of them. Actually, there's too much old Monkey Island everywhere to really let the new game breathe. There's only so much getting nudged in the ribs and "Remember this? Remember that?" I can take. Yes, I do remember. Can we go on now, please?

Overall, I'm afraid the Monkey Island-series is in dire need of a fresh take. One where there's no LeChuck and no leather jacket joke. This isn't it. It's still a fine game, but I can't help but feel such a beloved franchise deserves more ingenuity.”

“Funny like all the monkey-island-games! The pseudo-3D environment is a bit disturbing sometimes though and it takes some time to get used to the controls instead of running into things all the time.”

“Funny like all the monkey-island-games! The pseudo-3D environment is a bit disturbing sometimes though and it takes some time to get used to the controls instead of running into things all the time.”