When you hear of LucasArts Studios gamers usually think Star Wars or Indiana Jones. But many forget about the great adventure games that LucasArts did back in the day and are redoing now. Sam and Max as well as Wallace and Gromit come to mind, but another biggie is Tales of Monkey Island. Well LucasArts is back at it again, with the help of Telltale Games, to bring you a new installment to the Monkey Island series.
Episode 1, entitled Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, is the start of your adventure. You’re thrown in with Guybrush Threepwood, whose wife has been captured by the evil pirate La Chuck and a boatload of monkeys. Guybrush has to enchant a sword to stop La Chuck but instead it changes him back into a human and he gets infected by a voodoo spell. From there you are thrust into hours of adventure and humor galore. We don’t want to spoil much more than that since that’s the fun part of the game is finding out all these mysteries, either big or small.
Control is simple and easy; you move about with the typical WASD controls and click to interact with objects with the mouse. Simplicity was key for this game and Telltale hit that nail on the head with Monkey Island. You never feel that the controls get in the way or never know what you can or cannot interact with.
Visually the game is very impressive. Showing off some very nice environments and characters that both look good and animate well in the way they talk and interact with you. Backing it all up with some great background music and wonderful voice work, you can tell this title definitely had some time and work put into it so that the sound and visuals are engaging.
So does the first episode live up to the Monkey Island franchise? Yes, Telltale hit it right out of the park with the first installment of the series. It has plenty of humor, fun gameplay, nice puzzles and wonderful music and voice work. The only real setback to the game is that the hint system can be too helpful. While you can change up the options for hints, sometimes it still felt too forgiving.
For $35 bucks you can grab all 5 episodes of this wonderful series and it’s certainly worth the cash. While this is a PC only release at the moment, fear not, WiiWare will be getting this title with all the same bells and whistles and is sure to be just as good as the PC release.
Pros: Music, visuals, voice work, puzzles are fun
Cons: Hint system sometimes was too helpful
GamePro Score: 4.0
The Info: Platform: PC, WiiWare, Publisher/Developer:Telltale Games, Players: 1, Price: $34.95 for all 5 episodes
