Escape from Monkey Island
by LucasArts Entertainment
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Category: Video Games
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Product Summary
Brand: Lucas ArtsAudio: German (Original Language)
Format: CD-ROM
Release Date: 2000-11-07
Platform: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me
Model: 11018
Publisher: LucasArts Entertainment
Accessories:
Video Game Reviews of Escape from Monkey Island
Customer Review: not as amusing as the writers thought
Summary: 2 Stars
This is the fourth installment in LucasArts' "Monkey Island" series. Producers of the game have stated in on-line interviews that there would indeed be a fifth installment, but as of my writing it's apparently not under production.
I bought and played this one essentially on the strength of the third item in the series, "Escape from Monkey Island," which I adjudge to be far better.
They seemed to have a winning recipe in that installment: why did they completely overhaul the concept?
Well, okay, not everything was overhauled. The voice actors, atmosphere, and quirky sense of humor are all intact, but the game designers saw fit to completely revamp the way Guybrush moves around the screen. And whether you set his movement to "character-relative" or "screen-relative," it never seems to work right.
Nor do the gamemakers think anything of including a lot of puzzles that rely on a timer, so you've got to manuever this difficult to control character around before a certain door closes, etc. I don't think they had the right to do that, so to speak, while the character movement was so wonky.
But the thing that really gets my goat is that they took the unique, beautiful cartoony look of Monkey Island 3 and replaced it with CGI drawn characters, which effectively robs this series of its central charm: superior visuals.
The look of the islands, the sky, the clouds, and even the characters in Monkey 3 was so well-done and charming that I stuck with that game just to enjoy the game's eye-candy. I thought it was the game's greatest strength. And that's precisely what they've monkeyed with -- pardon the pun.
In fact, with the stunning visuals gone, the character of the gameplay rises to the fore, and the idiocy and frustration of many of the puzzles becomes unbdeniably apparent.
In fact, I got so frustrated with Monkey 4 that, after getting about halfway through the game, I just sat there with a walkthrough trying to get through the rest of it. Even with the walkthrough, though, it was still a slog! The entire time I was cheating, I kept thinking, "Sheesh. I'm glad I didn't waste precious hours of my life agonizing over that puzzle. I would simply never have guessed the solution, since THE SOLUTION DOESN'T MAKE ANY FLIPPIN' SENSE!"
. . . which means if you'd like to go through this game straight, you've basically got to try to pick up every object, try every object you have on every other object in every possible screen.
If you find this kind of thing fun, then knock yourself out.
Description of Escape from Monkey Island
LucasArts' Monkey Island adventure game series has been missed of late. It has been too long since we've visited the anachronistic Tri-Island area in a Monkey game stuffed with vivid characters, zany plot twists, and liberal use of awful and awfully funny puns. Thank goodness that the clumsy, bumbling, and utterly charming pirate hero Guybrush Threepwood returns in Escape from Monkey Island. Luckily for him so does his bride, Elaine Marley Threepwood; unluckily, it looks like the stubborn ghost pirate LeChuck may be back as well. Or is he? We'd tell you but that would give away too much of the vibrant and hilarious story line.This is adventure gaming at its very best: sharp graphics, excellent voice acting and writing, and solid puzzles throughout. LucasArts even included a walk-through that'll get any new players into the right mindset to solve the bizarre, convoluted, and convulsively funny pun-ridden puzzles in the game. But players who rely on it are missing out. Sometimes it's much funnier to do things the wrong way, because the sharp-minded developers probably already thought of it and are ready to reward you with a humorous comment or action. Completely hilarious, drop-dead gorgeous, and always innovative LucasArts proves once and for all there is ample life left in the adventure genre. --Andrew S. Bub
Pros:
- Excellent voice acting and writing
- Very funny
- Challenging for players of all skill levels
- The controls could be a little more streamlined
Escape from Monkey Island continues in the hilarious tradition of its critically hailed and award-winning predecessors, The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: Le Chuck's Revenge, and The Curse of Monkey Island. Developed by the team who created LucasArts's irreverent classic Sam and Max Hit the Road, Escape features an original cinematic story full of drama, intrigue, and of course, sidesplitting humor. The game is highlighted by hundreds of challenging puzzles, set amidst dozens of rich and brilliantly rendered backgrounds.
The day fast approaches when Guybrush Threepwood, Elaine Marley-Threepwood, Stan of Stan's Previously Owned Vessels, and the other bizarre characters from the beloved, anachronistic Monkey series come back to PC shores.
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