After years of waiting, Telltale Games released a new entry in the Monkey Island series last year for Windows and the Nintendo Wii. Luckily, the good folks over at Telltale announced that they are porting over most of their catalog to Mac OS X. The first game of theirs to get the royal Mac treatment is Tales of Monkey Island, so I decided I’d buy it to show my solidarity with the Mac gaming community. Here is my review.
The Basics
If you’ve played any of the previous four installments in the Monkey Island franchise, you’ll be familiar with the setting. Guybrush Threepwood, Elaine, LeChuck, the voodoo lady, and Stan all make a glorious return in this five part series of games. The vast majority of the voice cast is returning from either Curse of Monkey Island or Escape from Monkey Island. One thing that has changed noticeably, though, is the way the player interacts with the environment. Gameplay is drastically less complex than the days of yore. Instead of fumbling around with verbs, all you have to do is click on objects to interact. The inventory is even hidden away on the side. I really must say that the interface is extremely well executed.
On the down side, the movement controls are quite awkward. Instead of walking by clicking on a piece of land, you now control Guybrush with WASD or the arrows. Alternately, you can hold down the left mouse button and then move in the direction you want to go. You enable running by holding down the shift key, but there is a massive flaw. When you move between areas, the shift key isn’t persistant. You have to lift up and press it again. When you’re trying to navigate the twists and turns of the jungle, this is utterly unusable.
When I emailed Telltale Games support to report this bug, I received a prompt and polite reply from Seher Basak — a senior tester. Sadly, this was his response:
[The shift key issue] is functioning as it did on PC to eliminate problems that would occur from carrying over input.
They know about the issue, but it doesn’t look as if they plan on fixing it. That is extremely unfortunate.
The Structure
Like Telltale’s other games, Monkey Island is episodic. For $34.95 USD, you get five episodes. Each episode has a unique story, but they all come together to form a cohesive narrative. For example, you spend most of the first episode trying to get off of an island. In the third episode, you spend the majority of the game inside a giant manatee. Character interactions from one episode affect the rest of the episodes thusly.
Like adventure games from the late 80s and early 90s, this installment of Monkey Island is focused around interaction with non-player characters and solving clever puzzles. Unlike the classic adventure games, however, you won’t get stuck on some ridiculously difficult puzzle. If the game senses you’re getting stuck on a puzzle, Guybrush starts giving you hints. The best part is that you can adjust the frequency of the hints right in the menu. If you’re a hardcore gamer, you can turn them off. If this is your first time to the rodeo, you can crank that sucker up. Flexible difficulty that leaves all of the puzzles in tact is a pretty great way of tackling the problem. I applaud this implementation.
The Future
All the cards on the table, I find this to be extremely promising for the future of gaming on the Mac. We are slowly seeing more games — Braid and World of Goo for example — coming to the Mac because of the demand from the users.
Telltale has plans to bring Sam & Max, Strong Bad, and Wallace & Gromit to the Mac. Until the 28th of February, they are running a poll to see which of those three franchises should be ported first. If you’d like to get in on that, check out this page on Telltale’s site.
Of course, Apple’s mobile platforms are the elephant in the room. Telltale representatives have expressed interest in offering their content to as many platforms as possible. Clearly, the app store has a pretty big audience, so Telltale is keeping their eye on it. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if we eventually see something from Telltale hit the app store. Quite frankly, I’d like to see something completely original, and not just a port.
If you want some Monkey Island goodness on your iPhone or iPod Touch right now, you can check out LucasArt’s The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition on the app store for $7.99 USD.
In Sum
This is a solid port. Outside of a few quirks (Which I am told they are working on as I type), there aren’t many noticeable issues. Considering this is their first release, I am fairly impressed. Giving the folks at Telltale your hard-earned money will send them a message that Mac gaming is worthwhile. If Telltale thrives, it will only drive more people to release games for the Mac.
I sincerely recommend Tales of Monkey Island to anyone that enjoys adventure games and puzzles. If you’re at all familiar with the series, you will not be disappointed. At the same time, it isn’t really inaccessible to new players. They do a great job clarifying the major plot points of the last four games through dialogue. If you’re considering buying it, you can go play the demo. If you like it, please vote with your dollar.
So, what do you think of Guybrush’s latest outing? Have something to say about porting games to the Mac? Comment on this post or hit me up on Twitter.
Image Credit: Lucius Kwok & Telltale Games
