I love Telltale Games. I’ve been playing and adoring adventure games since I was old enough to point a mouse and begin navigating complex brain-teasers, but as I grew older and more bothered by the often nonsensical puzzles, the genre quickly faded into obscurity. Cue Telltale’s triumphant arrival on the scene to bring back my once-beloved genre. Even better, they’ve resurrected this stale game type by relying entirely on franchises that we already know and love. True, their attempts to bring Bone and CSI to the world of video games were kind of fumbled, but since then they’ve been on fire with consistent episodic releases for Sam & Max, Strong Bad, and Wallace & Gromit. I’ve enjoyed all of those to varying degrees, especially Sam & Max, so I was not remotely disappointed to hear that Telltale would be handling the revival of the much-loved Monkey Island series.
The result, unfortunately, has left me less satisfied than I’d hoped.
“Launch of the Screaming Narwhal,” the first in a planned five monthly episodes in the Tales of Monkey Island, was released last week. As with previous Telltale episodic games, Narwhal is relatively short, easily completable in a single three or four-hour sitting. Luckily, the scant running time is overflowing with strange, entertaining characters and clever dialogue that will keep you clicking through every option. Dividing the $35 asking price for the whole series on Steam, the first chapter comes out to $7. Whether it’s worth that much for less than five hours of hilarity is up to you, but before you rush out to buy it, you also might want to consider the gameplay.
Tales of Monkey Island trailer from Current Gaming
The kindest word I could use to describe the adventuring in Tales of Monkey Island is “old school.” Even more so than Sam & Max, the puzzles in Monkey Island are often goofy to the point of insanity. One early enigma forces you to mix a plant root into some grog to create “root beer,” a solution so inane that it would be frustrating if it didn’t take place in a small environment without many other options. Later tasks are not so blessed; as the world opens up, Narwhal becomes a game of figuring out what Telltale wants you to do next rather than what makes the most sense in any given situation with the tools at your disposal. Without giving too much away, there’s no reason I would have thought to try rubbing the big wheel of cheese I found across the front of a building if I hadn’t read it in a walkthrough. (So, yes, I did consult a walkthrough once or twice.)
There are also too many points in the game where progressing depends on simply walking around and talking to every character or showing them everything in your inventory until you find out some new piece of information. This is game design at its laziest, and while it’s less noticeable in such a short title, I still don’t think it’s particularly forgivable. In fact, it feels like these stretches where you’re not sure where to go or what to do next are blatant padding meant to mask the length, something that should be wholly unnecessary in an episodic release that most gamers understand isn’t going to be as long as a full retail release.
Narwhal also has a number of unique scenarios that stand out and provide some hope for future episodes. In particular, I loved using a treasure map to explore the island and search for buried loot. Having to dig into the inventory to pull out the map after every step was a bit less intuitive than it should have been, but this segment really added to the feeling of being a pirate much more so than anything else in the game.
I’m really torn here. Overall, my time back in the world of Monkey Island was enjoyable, full of laughs and pleasant surprises. But behind the fun, the game is built on some weak decisions that certainly feel like old adventure games…but only in so far as they remind me why the genre died years ago and has had so much trouble making a comeback. Veteran voyagers to Monkey Island needn’t hesitate to jump in, but if you’re on the fence about this revival, I’d recommend waiting until another episode or two are out to see if Telltale continues down the path of outdated design or if they improve the puzzles in the future. It’s great to revisit the past, but it’s better if we can learn from it.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:25 am
The only Monkey Island game I played was the PS2 version, and it was quite fun. When you were punching walls trying to figure out what it wanted you to do next.
I may give this game a try.. but it sounds like a wait and see.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Hmmm…might be better to just pick up the original on XBLA when it’s released. Then again, I typically cannot resist Monkey Island.
July 14th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I’m amazed that Telltale haven’t picked up on other quest or inventory management mechanisms – would it be too hard for them to pick up some design tricks from the RPG or MMO genres? Monkey Island was great for it’s time, but game design has moved on since then.
July 14th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
This makes me sad to hear this kind of response to the game, because I experienced the opposite. The combination of the familiar settings, voice acting, puzzle and situation structures must’ve gotten me into the old school cartoon adventure game logic as I breezed through the first part of the game.
It was like putting on a familiar and comfortable pair of pirate pants.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I actually didn’t have much trouble early in the game either. It was just that the further it got out, the more obscure and weird the puzzle solutions got. But I totally understand why really big fans of the previous games would enjoy the hell out of it, and I’m hoping the issues I had will fade away with future episodes.