Escape from Monkey Island Review

Boy, do I hate writing adventure reviews... I feel like having to tell everything about a movie to someone who had never seen it. Now what am I supposed to say without spoiling somebody else's enjoyment in the same adventure. I sure hope some MI maniac doesn't attack me shouting: "You half-wit! Why did you have to tell Le Chuck appears again? And I thought I finally got rid of him in the last sequel... How am I supposed to play now...?"

Carla and Otis...

Ohohhooooo!

Ops... Sorry... If you haven't played the game, just disregard my last sentence, and move right on to the end of the text, you know, scores and stuff. On the other hand, it wasn't too hard to guess that Guybrush will have to face this tedious ghost-pirate for the fourth time...

Our newlywed Guybrush and Elaine Threepwood went on a honeymoon. They must have had a swashbuckling hell of a time considering how many pirate ships they sunk on it. Anyway, their holyday ended, and when they came back to Melee Island, they found that things there changed. Elaine was proclaimed to be dead and a certain Charles L. Charles (khhhhmmm... C.L.C? Sounds familiar?) appeared in town. This L.C. bloke seems to be very dangerous as he intends to become the governor of the island. His pre-election campaign is based of a short yet troublesome slogan: Free Grog for all, so you can imagine what Guybrush (and Elaine) have to go through in order to win the elections. As usual, you'll first have to find a ship, gather crew and head towards the nearby Lucre Island, where you can get some legal help and prevent the destruction of your mansion. And so begins your grand quest for the Ultimate Insult - a collection of insults on an arcane language, which evolved into all other languages, making all the insults in it kinda universal, and the best thing is - no one will know how to replay to them! To further complicate matters, enter Ozzie Mandrill, a big Australian land-owner and businessman who'd like to buy anything he gets his hands on and turn this archipelago into a tourist center with no pirates and no grog. He'd even introduce a chain of restaurants called 'Planet Threepwood'... And there's a bunch of other familiar characters that aged a bit, changed their occupations and got another dimension.

If I had to write about a 3D adventure a couple of years ago, my texts would contain a lot of incoherencies like ^fu*ck&%y$ou#@... Oh, even mere reminiscence of that cheat code that would turn Indy in Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine into a 3D Guybrush gives me the shivers... I felt like Guybrush closed in a tiny room with a lot of china statues. Did I suffer too much violent 3D accelerator propaganda or did Lucas Arts perform a majestic job here? All I can say is I have no remarks on the new outlooks of MI... Escape from Monkey Island looks much alike Lucas Arts' Grim Fandango. Even the engine is an updated version of the Fandango 2D/3D engine. The greatest difference is that this engine uses 32-bit palette by default and that there is no software-rendering mode. There you have it. There's no more respect for us old-school 2D adventure players. Guybrush is quite right when he suggests his lawyers to sue the electronic gaming industry for driving hardware requirements to ridiculous heights, even for simple adventure games. Still, anything that is a 3D object in this game looks very pretty. The models have more than 1500 polys. I could only complain about several characters that look a bit worse because they have slightly worse textures (like the annoying perfume seller). It's just the same as in GF: the more space the model takes on screen, the more likely you are to notice its flaws. As for some special 3D effects, the game features beautiful and realistic shadows, mists, and dynamic lighting. The colors are much lighter and cheerful than in Grim Fandango...