Tales Of Monkey Island Episode 5 Review [PC]

16 Dec 2009 at 16:53:14 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (PC)

Five months ago, I penned the review of the first chapter of Tales of Monkey Island, Telltale's five-part episodic adventure series aimed at bringing back Guybrush, LeChuck, Elaine, and the rest of the gang. Thus far, it's been remarkably successful – despite some early missteps and the odd lull, there have been plenty of highs, and all in all the series has been on a consistent rise.

As this is a review of what is - if you take the episodic series as one game – the last fifth, be warned that spoilers for the previous chapters (particularly chapter four) are contained within. If you don't want to learn anything about the events leading up to this closing chapter, don't read on past the warning below. Just know that, if you've been holding out on the series in order to see how it stacks up as a whole, it does so very well indeed.

From this point on, the review contains spoilers for previous episodes, albeit stuff that was mostly hinted at in the full season trailer. Still, if you don't want to know anything about the continuing plot arc of Tales of Monkey Island, be warned.

All of those who don't want to know what Tales of Monkey Island is about gone, then? Good.

Chapter five picks up very much chapter four left off: Guybrush is dead, LeChuck is all-powerful, and... well, let's just say that everything seems to be going wrong. Guybrush awakens at the Crossroads, the place in the afterlife where souls decide on their final destination, with nothing but some grave dirt and a shred of life in his pockets. With this, it's up to him to escape the Crossroads, stop LeChuck, save Elaine, and possibly even return himself to life in the process.

This being the final chapter, Telltale really pulls out the stops on a number of ways. There are plenty of interesting challenges and situations, many of which relate not only to earlier chapters of Tales but to earlier Monkey Island games on the whole. Guybrush also gets the opportunity to see what LeChuck felt like as a ghost pirate in the real world – not that it earns him much sympathy – as well as few other ironic reversals.

It's also a surprisingly long chapter full of clever and entertaining puzzles, with a personal favourite finally bringing back insult sword-fighting with a fantastic twist that requires you to respond to two comments with one answer. It's not a difficult puzzle as long as you think about the way your answer will be construed by both parties, but it's a wonderful throwback and complements the object-based puzzles well.

It's also an chapter with two prominent problems. The first is that, initially, you have very little guidance as to what you're meant to do. While you'll have an idea of your ultimate goal, you're not initially given any tasks or clues to solve and are working under your own steam. Whether this is a big problem or not depends on your adventuring chops, but it's still a little jarring following the rest of the Tales series generally giving you something to initially work on before throwing a few quests at you simultaneously.

The second is the sheer amount of backtracking involved. One puzzle series, in particular, requires you to go from one end of the game world to the other and then back again three or four times in a row, with each trip taking a minute or two. It's something that breaks the pacing and starts to hugely grate, particularly if you think you've solved something at one end, head back, discover you haven't, and then need to wander back again.

All ...

Comment