“Can I have that bucket?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s there.”

“Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay”, the second episode in Telltales new Monkey Island episodic series, picks up immediately where the first game left off. While most Telltale episodic games can be played out of order without leaving the player completely lost, this is not the case with Tales. These episodes are written along the lines of old movie serials.

The first game left off with a cliffhanger that put Guybrush in a tight spot. This one picks things right up from there, starting with a sword fight. Rather than the insult sword fighting of the older games, this one has you solving a puzzle during your duel.

The game controls exactly like episode one. You point and click to interact with objects, but move Guybrush with either the “WASD” controls or by dragging the mouse. You can also run when moving with the mouse by holding down the right click. This feels incredibly awkward, but the increased walk speed is worth it. I am still of the opinion that the old point and click interface works best, especially since you are already using it for a majority of the game.

Once again, the writing is top notch. From start to finish, the game provided plenty of laughs. Now that I have finished the original Monkey Island (and Special Edition), I can see that they are really building off of the existing MI universe in these new episodes.

The voice actors also turned in great performances. Since this one allows Guybrush and Elaine the chance to interact more, you get a much better feel for the characters and their relationship. The secondary characters are off the wall, as you would expect, and the actors do a great job bringing the universe to life.

Without giving away any spoilers, I have to say my favorite parts of this episode were the interactions between Guybrush and LeChuck. I’ll leave it at that, because I really don’t want to spoil anything.

They also mix up the locations more in this one, as you go island hoping between several tiny islands to solve many of the puzzles. While it did make the game feel a little bigger moving from island to island, this was counterbalanced by the fact that most of the islands are very tiny; so tiny that the screen barely has to scroll over for you to have walked across the whole thing.

Like the first episode, the majority of the puzzles made enough logical sense, at least within the game universe’s twisted logic, that you can get through this episode in just a few hours. If you do get stuck there is, once again, a built-in tip system to help you out. If you aren’t progressing, Guybrush will randomly say helpful things to clue you in on the next puzzle.

“The Siege of Spinner Cay” is a nice continuation of the story and I am looking forward to the twists and turns they take us through in episode three.

You can get the entire season of “Tales of Monkey Island” from Telltale’s official site.

This review is based on the PC version of Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay provided to us by Telltale.

Tags: adventure, adventure games, episodic games, Lucasarts, Monkey Island, PC, Point and Click, Tales of Monkey Island, Telltale Games, The Siege of Spinner Cay

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 12:07 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.