Escape from Monkey Island™

Irritating controls, 3D that did not aged well & too many not logical puzzles. Still playable, but I'd choose any other Monkey Island game.

Though the Monkey Island series is beloved, this entry often gets a bad rap. I'm going to disagree with that in this review. I'll start off by conceding the two obvious drawbacks. First of all, the game looks terrible, especially today. With the previous installment, Curse of Monkey Island, the series moved to a cartoon aesthetic that never ages and added a lot to the already great atmosphere. This game decided to move to 3D: perhaps a logical decision in 2000, when this was where the innovation winds were blowing, but in retrospect it was a mistake. The backgrounds look weird and fake, and the character models, though suitably expressive and cartoony, arguably look even worse. Next up, the controls are clunky and annoying: if you've played Grim Fandango you'll definitely recognize them- and you should note that that game had an IMPROVED version of the controls scheme here. Ouch. But, both of these deficiencies are easily overcome and only take about an hour of getting used to. What remains unchanged is the focus on hilarious dialogue and story, colorful characters and fun, out-of-the-box puzzles. I would honestly say that if this game were made in the style of the previous Monkey Island, it would be one of the best entries in the series. The story is decidedly more political, but worry not: it takes a satirical approach. It lampoons the democratic process and the influence of capitalism, with its presentation of soulless chain restaurants and mass-produced souvenirs that should feel familiar to anyone living in a modern Western country. Overall, the game has a good balance of paying homage to developments in the previous installments, while still telling its own unique and fun story. It also has, like the previous game, a killer soundtrack that you don't get sick of and superb voice acting that really brings the humour home. So: far from perfect, but much better than usually given credit for. Give it a try!

The controls and keybinding system is a broken mess. You can't use whatever keys you like, for starters, whether the game tells you it's an "invalid key!" or just doesn't tell you anything at all. You can reassign the Default Action to a key of your choosing, but that key is ignored when you actually play the game. It's only honored in the main menu. What's the point of that? And then there's the killer feature: when you assign this default action to e.g. "U" you lock yourself out of ever changing the controls again because you won't be able to enter the submenu to configure keys! In fact you will hardly be able to change any option ever again unless you figure out that you can press multiple keys at once to work around it. If they're going to sell old wrecks like these, then they should at least make the source code available to GOG or others so that it can be fixed.

The puzzles are not as intresting as in the first or second game. The insult system comes back ONLY for onte time and teases you later in the game without any results. There are to many and to long cut scenes, especialy in the end of the game. But the worst thing is the 3-D layout and the controls. That is just awful. Using a joypad or keyboard for controls are VERY frustrating. Lucasarts thought they created Super Mario 64, but they was instead trying to imitate LJN.

Let me start by saying that I played almost ALL the Monkey Island games (still didn't play "Return") and loved them to bits. Yes, I get that it's a bit different than 1-3, it got a bit experimental but it's all good. Wacky humor is there, the puzzles are fun, story is bizzare but funky. And the game is sorta lampooning capitalism/ consumerism which is a huge plus for me. Anyway, I completely DON'T understand why some people think that Telltale's "Tales of Monkey Island" is better than Escape. Are you kidding me??? Hell no. Escape has still this hard-to-pinpoint LucasArts magic feel. Tales LOOK like Monkey Island, but IMHO something is missing. The "air" is different. Here it is still the good ol' Monkey Island! Give it a chance!