Synth-Studio Weblog

When I first heard about a “New Monkey Island Game” I was extremely excited.  I scoured the interwebs looking for all the information I could find.  Luckily I didn’t have to scour for too long.  Which was good, because I always get blisters afterword and it chafes.  You know like when… um..  Ahem.  Anyway as I was saying, Telltale Games had now officially announced that they were making an all new 5 part episodic Monkey Island game!

“Hooray!  It’s about damn time!  Finally!” I exclaimed. Then, I saw the trailer and some of the screenshots they had available. At first I had some misgivings about it.  I felt the textures were of low quality, they had no new music yet, and basically it was not a finished product.

But, after Telltale’s seminars*, motivational lectures*, and audio books on parrot*, I’ve become a vicious devoted fan!

I thoroughly enjoyed the game! For me it completely captures the essence of Monkey Island.

The Good:

• It’s an all new Monkey Island game!  What more do you need to know really?
• The game immerses you into the world of Monkey Island well enough that you want to know what types of other adventures Guybrush has been on, or relive them if you’ve played the previous games.
  • Some of the in-jokes are designed well enough to be obvious to an MI fan, while not degrading to the game continuity to pirate wannabes.
• The humor was spot on and only a touch more sophisticated.  After all, it has been almost ten years since the last game!
• Dominic Armato totally nails Guybrush in the new adventure!  Every line is just as great as I expected, as if there were any doubts.
  
  • I daresay that the voice acting overall in this game is some of the finest I’ve had the pleasure to play through since probably Grand Theft Auto IV.
    
• The artwork, models, and locations all look fantastic.
  
• The animation  is also quite well done, comical and over the top, or pretty natural looking depending on what’s needed.
  
• The music, well it’s new Monkey Island music composed by an artist who has worked on music for every previous MI game!
  
  • You want the short version?
    
    • The music is really great!

The Less Awesome:

Well, I suppose now you want to hear some of the things I didn’t like eh?  I mean, this can’t be all happy pixies and fairydust can it?  CAN IT??  OF COARSE NOT!  NOW!  SOME OF The — I’ll stop yelling now —

Some of the things about the game that annoyed/bothered me or I felt could have been done better are as follows:

• First, I now have to wait for the next episode to be released! 🙁
  
• Second, there is a classic joke used in the MI games by which you are presented some dialog choices and no matter what one you pick, Guybrush will say something else.
  
  • Usually, this is a dialog choice along the lines of something like: “I can’t think of anything I would hate more!” or “For the love of god, NO!”.  See? something like that.
    
  • Now the funny part of this joke is that no matter which of those two dialog options you select, Guybrush will actually say something like: “Perhaps, later.”  It’s like you get mock a character or insult someone, only not.  Pretty funny right?
    
  • Moving right along, the problem I have with this in ToMI is that it was overused within a single conversation.
    
    • When this is done more than once sequentially within a single conversion with a character, it makes the game feel cheap.
      
    • Don’t get me wrong, I still find it funny, but these things really should be spread out!
      
    • If they’re not spread out, it makes me think: “Hmm, maybe they were trying to save money/time during voice-over and are trying to cover it up as intentional?” or “Maybe Dom couldn’t get those lines how they wanted, no that’s not possible, everything else is gold!”.
      
• Another thing I didn’t like is that Telltale didn’t use any of my book titles or kinds of wind!** I thought they were pretty good!
  
• Last, I miss Earl Boen’s LeChuck.  The new guy is quite good, but it just wasn’t quite the same initially.  I’ll just get used to it though, no big deal.  Especially since I will be hearing Earl in the MI1 Special Edition on the 15th! 🙂
  

Looking to the future:

Some things I would like to see done in the future for this series:  Enable you to play through all the episodes in succession without having to ‘launch the next program’, perhaps this is being worked on.  Fingers crossed.

Note:  This post will probably be updated from time to time.  So check back later!

* Substitute:  The ‘Privite Pirates Club’ on Telltale Games website forums.  Also:  Yes, I did steal that line from MI3, it fits doesn’t it?  🙂
** See ‘more’ to see more!  Below…

Voodoo Monkey Image Gallery AKA Some Screenshots I Took:

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