Number 15: The Tales of Monkey Island

Long have Telltale games delivered us with delicious slices of episodic game pie. Sam & Max, Strong Bad, Wallace & Gromit Bone... They’ve been developing top-class PC games since the day they were founded. But with The Tales of Monkey Island they’ve just gone and shoved not only a tasty piece but the entire pie straight into our faces, and we’re not complaining.

Each of their previous series was done in Episodes. So, say, in Episode One you’d have Sam & Max fighting off an invasion of evil toasters, then in Episode Two they’d defeat the Tooth Fairy and her legions of evil cut-priced E-Readers. The Tales of Monkey Island is still done in parts, but this time its more chapters of a novel than a book of short stories. In some ways, Tales suffers from this, as being split into five four-hour segments does kind-of ruin the experience, but if you go and play them all back-to-back (The last chapter came out earlier this week.) then you’ll really get the feeling it’s something big.

Of course, it had to be something big because Telltale where working with arguably the only Point ‘n’ Click franchise more treasured than Sam & Max- A brand they’ve already successfully brought up to date. No game makes old PC heads more teary-eyed with nostalgia than Monkey Island, and Telltale Games recognised that. The months and months of work that went into it resulted in the new CSI (Another juggernaut of a franchise) game being rushed, and the new set of episodes from the ones their most famous for, Sam & Max, being delayed at very least half a year. Tales of Monkey Island is dripping with detail- References to previous Monkey Islands are around every corner, and nods to Sam & Max come up every now and again too, but all without any of it becoming tiresome.

The game was also realised on the WiiWare service, but a rather shoddy port (Controls, graphics and frame rate where all majorly compromised, somewhat of a surprise considering how smoothly Strong Bad ran on WiiWare) lead to us ignoring it from this list. However, if it’s your only way of playing Tales, then its well worth it anyway, as it’s simply a fantastic game.

378 words in, and we’ve hardly talked about why Tales of Monkey Island is a great game. Well, it’s hilarious funny, for starters. Playing as pirate Guybrush Threepwood, (Who regularly refers to himself as ‘Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate’, before having whichever character he’s telling now mispronounce his name.) you’re tasked with rescuing your wife and stopping an deranged evil pirate spirit from conquering the seven seas. And so, Guybrush gets lost on his quest and ends up trying to take siege on a ship made of bits of junk, put on trial and slapped repeatedly. Each new irrelevant twist is packed with gags, ranging from jokes about YouTube and Barbie to a number of very to-the-point questions. The first episode has the lightest chuckle density, but once you get past Flotsam Island, you’ll be laughing. If you have a sense of humour, you should have Tales of Monkey Island.