Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2: The Siege of Spinner Cay
Guybrush Threepwood. The Jerkbait Islands. La Esponja Grande. A voodoo disease. What the devil am I talking about? If there’s one thing you can say about the writers in the employ of Telltale Games, it’s that they have a twisted sense of humor. Which coincidentally is the best reason to jump into the Tales of Monkey Island episodic games. The most recent, The Siege of Spinner Cay, is the second in said series of classically styled adventure games building off of the LucasArts titles of yore.
“Siege” picks up from the end of the first installment, The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal. Our hero, Guybrush Threepwood: Pirate Extraordinaire, has been infected by a voodoo-diseased hand, and now not only searches for the cure but also for his beloved bride Elaine who has been spirited away by the recently resurrected and apparently reformed Ghost Pirate Lechuck. It gets less confusing as you play. Navigate Guybrush to Spinner Cay, a land of androgynous mer-folk who may hold the key to the cure. Unfortunately for you, other pirates have been infected as well and they aren’t as forthcoming or patient as Guybrush.
Like most adventure games, Monkey Island is mostly a point and click puzzler. Guybrush is moved around either by the arrow keys or by clicking and dragging in the direction you want to move. I found the mouse controls to be a little awkward, so mostly stuck with the traditional WASD or arrow key method. There are plenty of head scratcher puzzles to solve in order to complete the chapter and that’s done by interactive with other characters, collecting a myriad of items and using them in various, certainly uncommon ways. Often, you’ll need to combine items or give them to others in order to complete more complex mouse-traps.
The voice acting is top notch, and, as I mentioned, the writing is fantastic, but the visuals suffer just a little. The Monkey Island series has a very distinct style that is as obvious here as any of its predecessors, but I found it more than a little distracting that after having taken the jump from 2D into a 3D realm, the models suffered from bad collisions and overlaps, especially during close up lip-syncs.
I can look past that though. In total, “Siege” will have you putting in around 5 to 6 hours of gameplay which is on the light side, but seeing as you get 5 chapters (assuming 5 hours a piece) for around 35 bucks, you’re only talking about a measly 7 smackers for a good long, interactive laugh-fest.
If you’ve ever been a fan of point-and-click adventures, there’s no reason not to own and follow the Tales of Monkey Island. I’ll add that these are also available for WiiWare download on Nintendo’s system. My review was done with the PC version, but I can only assume the same can be said for the Wii as well, minus any differences in control.
