Tales of Monkey Island Ep. Two Review [PC]

You probably know this already, but a “cay” or “key” is a small, low island. Apparently it's probably derived from the Spanish word “cayo.” These islands are usually sandy, and normally around coral reef platforms. While you might've known this, the word doesn't tend to crop up so much in my region of the UK, and so I didn't.

And people say games aren't educational.

When last we met Guybrush Threepwood, he had escaped from Flotsam Island (where, you'll recall, the winds blew inwards) and was hot on the trail of the MacGuffin that can remove the voodoo pox haunting the Caribbean – the pox that Guybrush inadvertently unleashed from LeChuck, making the ghost/zombie/demon pirate human once more. The first chapter ended on a cliffhanger with our hero in a bit of a sticky situation, and this, the second chapter, picks up right where it left off: with Guybrush at swordpoint, and not a huge amount in the way of explanation for those who didn't finish the first part.

Telltale has bucked the trend of its previous episodic releases, here. The majority of them, from Sam & Max through Wallace & Gromit, have re-used locations. Generally, a few new ones are added and old ones are changed in minor ways, but it meant that a lot of the gags in these rooms were exactly the same again and again, which meant twenty humourless minutes until you got out of them into the new areas. Spinner Cay, on the other hand, only re-uses one location, and that's rather forgiveable being that it's the boat. Personally speaking, I reckon that if you're going to make your hero's primary transport a location, you can get away with re-using it.

That's not to say that there isn't some disappointment. There's Yet Another Jungle Maze, and three of the other locations in the game are almost carbon copies of each other with various bits of detritus labelled simply as “stuff.” This wasn't too much of a bother when The Secret of Monkey Island had a lot of largely useless beaches, but in a game as small as this both of these are a tad underwhelming, and tend to lack the bits of humour that were to be found even in those old scenes.

And while the problem of re-used locations has been largely fixed, there are a few dull characters. The first chapter, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, gave us the magnificent Van Winslow and the Marquis de Singe, and while there are some gems here, there are still a lot of side characters who look like generic pirates. Many could be palette swaps of characters from the first chapter, for all the originality in them. Hell, some of them might be characters from the first chapter, as there were a few too many dull characters there too.

The upside of this is that the developed cast is wonderful. Guybrush is as pitch-perfect as always, with plenty of witty and wry observations, but the joy here comes from the characters we're finally seeing more of. Morgan LeFlay, the pirate hunter hinted at in the first episode, makes a fantastic first appearance, and Elaine plays a much heavier role in the goings-on this time around. The real show-stopper, though, is LeChuck. All reservations I had about how the character would work without a voodoo pox making him evil (or more evil, at least) are gone; the good LeChuck is adorable, and there's a wonderful, wonderful throwback to older adventure games in a puzzle involving him.

That puzzle, in fact, is one of the highlights of the game. It's sadly all too easy, requiring nothing in the way of lateral thought, but it's deeply enjoyable nonetheless and showcases some of the best humour in the game. The rest of the puzzles are a mixed bag. Some are simple and obvious Take A To B tasks that don't really deserve the term “puzzle,” while another had me stumped for the best of an hour – not bad, by Telltale standards. By and large, they average out; rarely are they too frustrating, but a few are poorly signposted. The hint system is as much to fault for this as anything else – while in the first chapter it gave you an idea of what you should do next, this time around it generally resulted in Guybrush telling me that he should go and find something to plunder (which turned out to be so far from any of the puzzles left in the game it was almost a non-sequitur.)

In this case, a mixed bag of puzzles leads to a mixed bag of a game. Some aspects are clearly improved on, and one part with the glorious LeChuck not only had me double-take but also burst into hysterical laughter, while the hint system's presence here feels like a misstep. It's not as cohesive as the first chapter but it has its moments, and there are improvements along the way. I also can't express how lovely it is to have an episodic adventure that feels genuinely episodic, with the continuing story added to in this second chapter.

Trite as it is, if you enjoyed the first chapter, you'll enjoy this. If you didn't play the first chapter, though, then that will have to be your first stopping point to get maximum enjoyment out of this flawed but enjoyable adventure.