"My Name Guybrush Threepwood and I'm a Mighty Pirate (tm)"
If there was one game I regret not playing until now, its probably the first in the Monkey Island games from Lucasarts. These classic adventures are held among many as an example of a time when gameplay was more important than graphics. So it was quite controversial when Lucasarts announced that Tell Tale (makers of the new set of Sam and Max games as well as Wallace and Gromit) would be making a set of episodic games in the franchise. Has the first episode managed to be a worthy successor? Or is it just a damp squib me heartys? (I’ll try to cut out the pirate phrases)
Episode 1 starts off several years after the last game Escape from Monkey Island, at the conclusion of an adventure we will never see with Guybrush Threepwood’s wife (Governor Elean Marley) in the hands of the zombie pirate LeChuck (for those of you who haven’t played any of the previous games, think of him as a rotting version of Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean). Guybrush has finally found a way to defeat LeChuck once and for all but before he manages to do so (and due on part to a error on his part) he ends up turning LeChuck into a man again and infecting himself with an evil voodoo hand. And then the ship blows up. So yep, business as usual for the Monkey Island franchise. Nice to see them sticking with the same crazy style of plotlines.
Another thing that Telltale have done well with is keeping the same feel of gameplay. Monkey Island is all about combining items and dialogue trees, and the episodes have these in spades. As usual the item combos make sense (always good) and the dialogue is actually funny, which is very rare for games. Some of the accents are slightly grating, but overall you’ll want to play with the voices on rather than just going by subtitles (how I played Sam and Max). As for the graphics, the game uses and improved version of the Tellltale engine which now features depth of field effect to good use (you don’t realise what you got till its gone) with a subtle touch. This does mean that it can be a little overpowered on laptops but the lower detail settings are still quite good looking.
My only real problems are very small. The first is the control system, which uses a combination of point and click (very good) and a drag mouse move system (less good). This mashup is a little counter intuitive until you eventually realise that you can actually use the WASD combination for control. The other issue is pricing. On the Telltale website, each episode can be bought separately for a good price or in a bundle for a very good deal. However, if you want to buy it on Steam (the place most people will probably get it from) you can only buy it in one pack. This episode is really good, but the future ones may or may not actually be that good.
Overall, this first episode is very promising. Although not as good as the original games (which are classics for our time) it is a very good modern follow up. With any luck the rest of the episode should be good. In other words, this be good booty me hearties, arragh!
Episode 1 get 80%
