Tales from Monkey Island Episode 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwha
Tales from Monkey Island Episode 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwha is the latest in the series of sequels to old Lucas Arts Adventure games from Tell Tale games. The first being Sam and Max, and hopefully Maniac Mansion and Full Throttle will follow. Tell Tale also made the 5-part Strongbad’s Cool Game for Attractive People, and are releasing Sam and Max Season 2. Tell Tale games have got a knack for these games, they really understand what made the adventure genre great, and how to upgrade them for modern gamers.
Tales from Monkey Island does something new in that the new episodes will be continuations from the previous ones. So we’ll end up with a full-fledged game experience instead of 5 mini games.
You don’t need to play the previous Monkey Island games know appreciate this one, but it helps to learn the characters and in-jokes. Even just playing the recently release (on PC and Xbla) Secret of Monkey Island will help a lot.
This episode starts with Guybrush trying to save his once again kidnapped wife from the ghost pirate Le Chuck. After performing a voodoo ritual to defeat Le Chuck, Guybrush ends up losing his boat and his wife, returning his enemy to life, and getting stranded on a tough to escape island.
The gameplay is a little different from the other Tell Tale games. It does play like a typical point and click adventure, but the movement isn’t typical at all. Instead of just clicking on where you want to go, you have to hold down B, and move the remote in the direction you want to move in. This is really annoying so you should use the nunchuck to move Guybrush around. It’s a weird combination of new and old adventure games. I’d prefer if they just get rid of the point and click interface and have you interact items by pressing a button while next to that item instead of having to walk over with the nunchuck and point the wiimote at the screen to interact with stuff.
This episode is about 3 hours long, and also contains a treasure hunt mode where you can play a sound based like mini game to find treasure based on some maps you have. It’s actually a pretty annoying game, but it does add a little more to do once you complete the main adventure.
All in all, if you love these types of adventure games I recommend checking out this game. If you haven’t played a previous Monkey Island game and are interested in checking out a point and click adventure I recommend checking out either the Sam and Max Season 1 game for Wii, or the Secret of Monkey Island game for PC/XBLA first. Overall this is still a good game, but I did like those more.
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