Tales of Monkey Island started ignominiously, and it looked set to continue that way. Like its predecessor, Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventures, it was an artful, uninspired, almost retrograde take on the adventure genre. Awkward in its execution and a hassle to play, it was unfriendly to players and uninspiring. The differences between that first installment The Flight of the Screaming Narwhal and the second, The Siege of Spinner Cay, are not at first obvious.
After all, Telltale has not changed their “winning” formula one iota. If it’s broken, the last thing Telltale wants to do is fix it. Despite the game’s avoidable mistakes and trying elements, it’s much more enjoyable than Narwhal.
This Tale starts out where the last one left off. Guybrush has unleashed a quite peculiar Voodoo curse, turning Le Chuck human, and spreading the green, violence-inducing “Pox of Le Chuck” across the Caribbean. While the stakes might seem high at the start of the episode, by the end, it’s quite apparent that something even more important to Guybrush than a Voodoo epidemic is going on.
When Guybrush arrives at Spinner Cay, in search of Elaine, he finds her negotiating a brand of peace between the local fish people (all of whom seem to be attracted the foolish Guybrush) and a band of poxy pirates. Guybrush, guided by the Voodoo Lady, must find and use three ancient artifacts to summon the Gods of water, that they may lead him to L’Esponga Grande, the only voodoo artifact capable of stopping the Pox.
If it sounds fantastical and silly, and just right for a Monkey Island game, then that’s because it really wants to be a Monkey Island game. However, it still, one episode in, can’t muster the same narrative momentum that the previous titles managed to create. Even within the episode, there’s no sense of urgency, at least, until the Pox begins to affect Elaine, and Le Chuck becomes even more strangely friendly.
It’s not quite enough to save the episode, but it’s enough to set up an interesting plot moving forward. Unfortunately, nothing much else in the series is moving along with the plot. The interface is still just as terrible, and the puzzles are still mildly entertaining at best. In fact, the only good puzzles are in themselves not terribly clever. They’re elevated by their writing, luckily. The best by far is an extended gag/puzzle whereby the human Le Chuck must aid Guybrush in solving a puzzle.
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Eric Palmer
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... I've been interested in these games, and I'd love to play them. I'd buy every one of them if they'd come out on XBLA, but until then, I'll pass |
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