Orderoftheflame

Launch of the Screaming Narwhal sees the return of everybody’s favourite Mighty Pirate™, with the revival of the acclaimed Monkey Island series.

This episode is the first of five in the series, following the standard model of cheap episodic content that Telltale have been known to offer. As the game is extremely story based it is hard to explain without giving major spoilers. However, I will mention that the game sees a return of many favourable characters from the previous titles, as well as introducing many new ones. As the story of this game is only one chapter in five, it is hard to tell if the story across all the titles will be as good as any of the previous games, however, it is certainly more than enough to get me interested in wanting to play through the rest of the series.

The humour in the game is fantastic as you would expect from a Monkey Island game, and many of the “in jokes” from the previous titles have been included or referenced to, adding an extra bonus for the numerous fans of the series.

The gameplay follows the main puzzle solving elements that you’d expect from any good adventure game, whilst the puzzles are slightly less challenging than any of the previous games, they still offer plenty of variety throughout the episode, and should be more than enough to keep a player occupied for a few evenings or more depending on their skill level. People generally love or hate the adventure game genre,  so it is safe to say that the gameplay style is not for everyone.

The controls are generally your standard point and click mouse interface, however, a WASD movement system has been implemented to aid the player in moving around the new 3D environments. Whilst this feels somewhat clumsy at first, once you become used to it, it feels seamless with the mouse interface. This is a minor problem, and becomes insignificant compared to the main selling points of the title.

The graphics are extremely stylised and quite cartoony and whilst they are not up to any kind of comparison to modern realistic games, it is quite obvious that the game isn’t trying to compete in this area. The environments and characters are beautifully designed, and full of interesting features waiting to be spotted.

All character movement seems very fluid, and facial expressions (particularly during dialogue) are excellent. Whist at first I wasn’t particularly keen on the looks of this game’s incarnation of Guybrush Threepwood, I quickly grew on him, and realised that he really fits with the rest of the game.

The soundtrack to the game is a generally good one, which is unsurprising seeing that Telltale hired Michael Land (composer from the original games) to produce the score. Many classic pieces of music from the older games have been re-recorded masterfully, as well as several excellent new tracks.

Tales of Monkey Island sees the return of many of the voice cast from the previous games, including Dominic Armato reprising the role of Guybrush. Armato’s voice for the character has always seemed to be perfect for the role to me, so I was glad that he secured the role rather than being replace by a new actor.

Whilst this is quite a short game, players should remember that is episodic content, and contains only one chapter of a five chapter game. As to replayability, as with all adventure games, some people love to replay them, whilst some feel it to be a waste of time seeing that you already know the solutions to the puzzles. I’m most definitely in the former group, and personally enjoy replaying games like this to squeeze all of the humour out of the dialogue.

It feels very much that Telltale games have gone out of their way to revive a classic game series, rather than to just ride out on it’s success like many companies decide to do, and it seems that extra effort has been paid into ensuring that existing fans are happy with the final product.

For me this is most definitely a Monkey Island game, and is more than worthy of continuing a great franchise

For me the game is extremely good value for money, at £25 for an entire series of episodic content (5 games over 5 months). The option of being able to get downloadable content as well as a DVD of the series direct from Telltale seems like an incredible offer at this price, and well worth it for lovers of both the series and the genre.