Tales of Monkey Island: Complete Season

Just a quick review: This remake did an excellent job overall of capturing the fun, humor and puzzle solving of the rest of the series. The new characters in the game are enjoyable and one of them is so well done that I was blown away by how much I actually felt bad for her in her situation. This game is definitely worth the small asking price if you enjoyed the Monkey Island series even just a little bit.

I played this on Steam and I really enjoyed it, totally worth getting now that it's on sale. I enjoyed the humor and the puzzle solving. It did get me stumped at times, but that's what adventure games are suppose to do. If you are a previous Monkey Island fan this is worth getting and if you are not then I still recommend getting it.

So, I've tried to like this game. I have all the Telltale Games (except Jurassic Park) and liked them all. This game is okay, but it just wasn't very Monkey Island. Here is what I miss: The dialogue should be in "trees" not lines, and the various options should all be something funny. A typical Tales of Monkey Island dialogue choice will give you three options, but no matter what you pick, Guybrush will say the same thing. This is arguably a "joke," the joke being Guybrush will not obey you, but the dialogue substitution is rarely funny, and I think this "joke" is more of a cover for the dialogue failing to be fully voiced. There are not options. In older Monkey Island games, you would have large open areas which could be explored and several puzzles to pick away at at once. This game has very little to do at any one time. Because of this, the puzzle difficulty is minimal, and puzzles can be solved through the brute force method. This makes puzzles feel more like quests or a boring list of tasks that you must complete to get on with the story. See something in the scene that can be clicked? Then it will be used in the puzzle. The setting. This story is crammed with so many "voodoo gods," silly mythical creatures, and spells that it feels like a fantasy game rather than a pirate adventure. The other monkey island games have a ghost story/spooky feel instead. Also...that art. Guybrush has lines around his eyes that make him look exhausted, and the whole game has a cheap, glossy look. It's not a bad game, but it's not even a better point-and-click, and it certainly doesn't seem to live up to the Monkey Island legacy. (Just a note: the voice acting is very good. Guybrush here is Dominic Armato, who has been the voice of Guybrush since MI3. Elaine has a new, but good, voice.)

The simple reason that this is the best digital version of this game is that Earl Boen, the original voice actor for LeChuck, lends his voice to Episode 1 in this version. Steam uses Adam Harrington, and Telltale will only let you download from them if you bought the game back in the day. For that reason alone, you ought to get the game from GOG. HOWEVER, Episodes 4 and 5 are broken in this release. But without a workaround. At a certain point in both episodes the game will crash - in EP4, this will be when you visit the Voodoo Lady's hut. In 5, when you visit the jungle. Don't worry! The autosave has your back. Once you hit these crashes, go to the game installation directory and delete all *.dlg and *.chore files. Once done, the episodes will play normally. I don't recommend doing this fix *before* the crashes, simply because I do not know what side effects they have. Ideally, GOG would give this game a quick QA pass.