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Tales of Monkey Island is the revival of a series that has been dormant for almost 10 years. And a worthy successor it is. The pairing of LucasArts and Telltale is one from heaven and it seems LucasArts has finally learned to give fans what they want.

The game is set after the nonexistent Monkey Island 5. Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal takes off with Guybrush seemingly coming to the close of an adventure, about to defeat LeChuck and take back Elaine. But in typical Guybrush fashion, something goes wrong which sends him on a completely new adventure: to rescue Elaine and stop LeChuck. Wait, hasn’t he done this one before? Well in this case you can’t have too much of a good thing. After the prologue, Guybrush washes up on Flotsam island to find himself with no way off. Thus starts our epic tale of piratey goodness.

What we liked:

The Puzzles

The game definitely does not disappoint in the puzzle department. While there are a few easy ones, in general the puzzles are challenging enough to keep your interest but not so hard to be frustrating. Basically, the perfect difficulty. At least one or two of the rival those from the original game or LeChuck’s Revenge. I am proud to say I did not make use of the hint system at all, but if you do have trouble, there is a setting to adjust the frequency of hints given.

The Humor

This game is definitely Monkey Island, and there are several moments that will make you laugh. I won’t spoil any, but trust me that you won’t be disappointed in this department.

The Controls

The controls were somewhat of a mystery leading up to the game, the only scheme being known was with the arrow keys from seeing the game at E3, but not confirmed to be the final control scheme. The game turns out to have two possible control schemes. The first is just like what was shown at E3: use the arrow keys (or WASD) to move Guybrush. The second, new control scheme uses the mouse but not in a traditional manner of point and click adventure games. Instead, you hold the left mouse button and drag in the direction you want Guybrush to move. Definitely innovative and works surprisingly well, though I stuck with WASD for most of the game.

The In-Jokes

There are several jokes in-game that pay homage to both previous Monkey Island games as well as other Telltale and LucasArts games. Some of them are easy to spot and others take a keen eye to spot so keep your eyes open.

Overall Gameplay

The game is beautiful, and in more ways than just aesthetics. The gameplay is very smooth and I was able to run the game at full settings (9) with no choppiness whatsoever on my laptop, a 1.8GHz Dual Core with 2GB RAM and NVIDIA 8600GT. The voice acting is brilliant with Dominic Armato as good as ever, and the same goes for Michael Land’s musical score.

What we didn’t like:

Reused Models

While it’s hard to find fault with this game, there was at least one issue. There are several characters in the game that use the same character model. While this is not a big issue, as the characters in question are not seen on screen at the same time, once you notice it, it is just a bit of a bother.

I personally cannot wait for the next episode. It’s almost surprising that this is just the first episode with how epic of a scale it was. There is very little to complain about and I applaud Telltale on living up to the Monkey Island standard.

Final score: 4/5 stars