Game Details

Background

The original Monkey Island games were some of my all time favourite games on the PC, with their offbeat humour and insult sword fighting, and Tales of Monkey Island is the latest installment of Guybrush Threepwood (Mighty Pirate TM). It is developed by Telltale games responsible for the Sam and Max and Wallace and Gromit Episodic games, and Tales of Monkey Island follows this tradition, with Launch of the Screaming Narwhal being the first part.

You start off with a strangely familiar scene, Guybrush having to save Elaine from Le Chuck. After a little improvisation, Guybrush manages to stop Le Chuck’s latest plan, but as normal something goes wrong and another adventure ensues.

Game Modes

Being a single player episodic adventure there is only one mode, and that is the single player story.

Technical Stuff

Thankfully Tales of Monkey Island does not require a high spec computer to run and you can get away with a 2.0 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM and a 64 MB video card.

My Impressions

While not as long as I would have liked, I was fairly happy with the game overall, as it had nice nods to previous games including a list of requirements for a voodoo spell that included an ultimate insult and root beer. They also kept the same voice actors from earlier games, and there were repeat appearances from the expected ancillary characters, though sadly no Murray, though he is name dropped at one point if you investigate the correct item.

The style and tone of Tales of Monkey Island fits with that of earlier installments and shares the same sense of humour found in them. There are a few things absent that I would have liked to see, most notably insult sword fighting but it is possible that it could appear in later episodes.

Being a point and click adventure it has the universal flaw that if you get stuck, you end up going nowhere problem requiring a visit to a walkthrough. I also found the controls slightly fiddly, until I realised I could use the arrow keys to move rather than relying on the recommended dragging mouse action. My main complaint about the game though, is that I wish it was longer.

My Recommendation

Buy – 8/10

If you like point and click adventures, and want there to be more Monkey Island in the future then you have to go and buy this game. While a trifle on the short side and with slightly awkward controls it still has most of the elements that made the original games great and I am eagerly anticipating the remaining episodes.