Escape from Monkey Island

In days of yore, there was a pirate. Not a very good one. His name struck fear into the hearts of many a terrified schoolchild! Yes, This marks the return of everyones favourite pirate with a silly name: Guybrush Thropweed..erm...Threepwood. I found The Secret Of Monkey Island and Monkey Island II very good. It had laughs, the puzzles and good graphics. But....11 disks for the Commodore Amiga version of number Two! Appart from that, they were enjoyable because they were cleverly thought out. The graphics at the time where excellent. This one is a worthy addition to the series. It marks a departure for the point and click system: say hello to a 3d control system that makes the game a tad hard. Especially on a PS2! But it's a small niggle to a good game. Oh, if anyone finds out how to get through the gate in the swamp and fight Pegnose Pete, it would mean alot to me!! I'm that rubbish at it!

Ahhh the Monkey Island series, easily definable from other adventure series in the genre by it's witty sardonic humour, flavourful Caribbean back drop and... well... the monkeys.

Escape follows the same tried and true Monkey Island design that we've all come to know and love, albeit utilising 3d graphics and a new inventory and command system.

Gone are the days of point and click mouskateering, command and inventory panels. Escape uses the Grim Fandango GRIME graphics engine which is an improvement over the high res SVGA "pencil drawing" graphics of Curse, and continues the trend of past Monkey Island teams to utilise the latest technological advances in each new instalment of the series.

So how does it compare to past Monkey Island titles? Well, the humour is still there, Dominic Armato returns to lend his voice talents to the main role of Guybrush, and he lends the perfect bumbling and slightly naive touch to the well written script. Similarly, the scores of other characters are well represented and Lucasarts should be commended on the high level of authentic acting talent recruited.

The game play is typical wacky fair. The difficulty level is kept down due to the somewhat linear fashion that the game unfolds in. None the less, one is presented with suitably complex challenges and plenty of in-depth exploring will be required in order to complete the game. Lucasarts have also expanded upon the action sub-games within Escape. In MI 1 we were introduced to insult sword fighting and Curse continued this and added a kind of pirate ship shoot em up for good measure. Escape goes further and you'll find yourself engaging in monkey martial arts and cliff top diving.

The graphics are well rendered and I'm pleased to report that the blockiness and jagged edges some of us associate with low res 3d animations are not present in Escape from Monkey Island. The characters are cartoony cute, but not so ridiculous that you would mistake Escape for a Nintendo 64 game.

All in all Escape is a well made game, perhaps a bit short, but never the less a lot of fun, it will be interesting to see where they go after this, it's hard to imagine that the designers of the next sequel will be able to change much when it comes to the graphics or inventory systems, but if history is anything to go by, major changes are install. I for one can't wait!

Normally, sequels are worse than their predecessors. This is generally more true for movies than computer games, but mostly holds true for computer-games too. Escape from Monkey Island is an exception to this. It is in my opinion the best of the four games, and then I think the three predecessors to this one were great too.

You will like this game the most if you have played the previous three, since there are a lot of flashbacks, and characters from the old games in this one, so you will miss out on a lot of the jokes and story if you haven't played them.

But if you did play the three other Monkey Island games, and loved them as I did, you MUST play this one. It is truly great, and everything is perfect. It's true they moved to 3D this time, but it wasn't at all disturbing as I thought it would be. The graphics is great, the story is even better, and the humor is fantastic! It's a must-play!

The monkeys are listening...

Yes, I played the first game and this one. I missed out on part two and three which is a bit sad as I apparently miss LeChuck as a zombie and demon. I also missed the amusement park and I am sure there were quite a few funny moments and puzzles to be had there. This one is rather funny too, and a rather straight forward kind of game. I really only had difficulty in one section and that is only because I was pushing the wrong button like an idiot. Speaking of idiots, Guybrush Threepwood is back and after a brief skirmish out on the high seas he and his wife return home to find out someone has taken over as governor of the island. There is an Australian making fools of the pirates when they do the insult sword duel and he seems to have an evil scheme. The local bar has become a nice little restaurant where you get your meal served to you on a conveyor belt, you get to go to a cool place and try to out cliff dive some dude, and you of course end up once again at Monkey Island! So lots of comedy bits, the game progresses rather smoothly to be sure with very little thinking needing to be done to get by most of the puzzles. A little more challenge could have helped a bit, and maybe some various endings or something but all in all an amusing game.

Honestly, the most fun I've ever had on a PC. Other games I've got-Max Payne, Quake 3, Carmageddon TDR. I don't really have the patience for 'quick-reflex' games, but EMI really entetains me. I play it every Christmas since the day I got it (X-Mas) and it never seases to make you laugh out loud.

The only gripe is the 3d. Remember 1997-CMI? Still looks great, huh?

Three years later and this has aged-I dis-like 3D 'cos it goes obsolete so soon. Why, oh, why, not a CMI engine game.

DO yourself a favour, open a new window, go to lucasarts.com and buy MM2: Day of the tentacle, Sam and Max, Full throttle and the monkey island bounty pack and EMI. You'll then be ready to live, my son.