Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista; 2.0 GHz CPU; 512 MB RAM; 64 MB DirectX 8.1-compatible video card; DirectX 8.1-compatible sound card; DirectX 9.0c or higher
Genre: Adventure
Release date: Available now

In the early 1990s, developer LucasArts’ graphics-based adventure games ended the scourge of the Infocom text parser with the colorful stories and sharp writing found in Loom, Day of the Tentacle and The Secret of Monkey Island. Ever since LucasArts abandoned the adventure genre to concentrate on making first-person shooters, fans have been waiting in patient anticipation for new installments of their favorite series. Their patience has been rewarded, as developer Telltale Games, master of episodic gaming content (Sam and Max, Wallace and Gromit, Strong Bad), returns us to the goofy world of Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate in Tales of Monkey Island Episode 1: The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal.

Tales wastes no time putting you into the action. Threepwood’s saucy, British-accented wife Elaine has been captured by his nemesis, the demonic pirate LeChuck, and a mishap with a bottle of fizzy enchanted root beer forces Threepwood to alter the recipe for a magic sword that will destroy LeChuck. In fact, the cutlass has the opposite effect: instead of killing LeChuck, it turns him into a hunky, long-bearded human. An explosion aboard LeChuck’s ship sends Threepwood flying into the ocean, only to wash ashore on Flotsam Island, a place where no ships can leave because all of the sea winds are blowing inward. Threepwood must find a way to return the winds to their natural courses, take command of the only ship docked at the island and return to the sea in search of Elaine.

Tales plays pretty much the same way as Telltale’s other adventure games. You use pretty-boy pirate Guybrush to explore your surroundings, pick up and/or examine items and talk to NPCs to solve a series of puzzles. Some items must be combined to be successfully used; this is done on the inventory panel, which can be summoned by moving the mouse cursor to the right-side edge of the screen. To use inventory items, simply click on them and drag them to where you want to use them. The one major departure from the usual game mechanic is the character movement. Instead of moving the mouse pointer to the desired destination and left-clicking, Guybrush can be moved either with the WASD keys or by clicking on him and dragging him in the direction you want him to go. The latter can be awkward and frustrating; I used the keyboard throughout the game’s approximately four hours of playtime.

Tales carries the Telltale graphic signature: cartoon-style visuals with lots of large character models and bright, colorful backgrounds. Once you leave the docks and begin the real adventuring, a fast-travel method helps you move quickly between important points on the island. The puzzles are challenging and (for the most part) logical in their solutions, provided you don’t lose sight of your objectives. But the game’s most endearing feature is the script, which is filled with infectious humor and the occasional really bad joke. And, unlike Telltale’s other series, the Tales games are serialized, rather than a collection of stand-alone stories. So if you want to see how it all ends, you’ll have to buy all five episodes (currently planned to be released monthly).

But there are a few warts on the nose of this otherwise charming pirate saga. The puzzle content in Tales is somewhat thin, with only two or three that require any amount of serious thought. There are some graphics glitches; several times during my playthrough Guybrush traveled across the screen without bending his legs, moving like he was on an airport people-mover. There was also a particularly nasty game-breaking bug in which Guybrush became trapped inside a stone gateway and refused to move (I had to load a previous saved game to continue). And some dialogue-tree choices don’t disappear after you listen to them. If you try to click through conversations you’ve already heard, sometimes the character continues to speak the entire sentence that you’ve tried to skip, leaving you with two lines being spoken on top of each other.

Tales of Monkey Island Episode 1 is obviously a shakedown cruise for Threepwood and Company. The game is far too short, the puzzles are repetitive and uninspired, and the character movement scheme can sometimes make some of the puzzles more frustrating than fun. But, as in the other episodic series in the Telltale repertoire, the real star of the show is the writing, which is consistently entertaining even if the rest of the game is not. Here’s hoping that, as the series progresses, the rest of the elements will come together, shaking the cobwebs off of an almost 20-year-old franchise.

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