This game wasn't going to please everyone. But it did please me. Sure, it was way easier than Thimbleweed Park. Sure, it has a 'meta' ending. Sure, it doesn't have pixel art. I won't critique it as a game (though it's an above average game). I'll critique it as a story. Because it's a unique story I am happy I got to experience. I don't care. It made me cry a little. Over the meta ending. Over how the relationship of Elaine and Guybrush is portrayed, after years of back and forth over what that relationship is (I feel acknowledging and answering that back-and-forth at the same time, in a deeply human and touching way.) Ron said in an interview that Tales was an adults' game. This is a game about adulthood. (No, not in the way some people interpreted it. In a way that has an amazing amount of heart, feeling and understanding behind it.) Thank you, Ron, for finally letting me hear your story.
This game can hardly be discussed separately from its creator, Ron Gilbert (of Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island fame). It's definitely a throwback, or "retro" game - funded on Kickstarter primarily on promises of nostalgia. From a pure mechanical gameplay perspective, you get a barely updated experience compared to the point-and-click games of the late 80s, early 90s. The graphics, while updated with lighting effects, many-layered parallax scrolling, and other niceties, is also definitely and purposely retro. I'd say it's mostly as if Monkey Island was running on high-end arcade hardware from the day, as opposed to scrappy home computers. Still, there's something here that cannot be overlooked. This game is the culmination of Ron Gilbert's experience in developing adventures. It's a seamless, fun, polished gameplay experience. If you are familiar with the genre and its criticism, you'll find that many of the rough edges common to it have been polished away, or, ironically, integrated and self-referenced in a fourth-wall-breaking manner. It's a strange, unique piece of art. (And no, I don't mean "high Art", the game holds no such pretenses... just, you know, "art" with a lowercase a.) A perfected, relatively high-budget, director's cut example of an undead genre. It's as if Charlie Chaplin went back to make one final silent film, with modern Hollywood tech, a proper budget, and all his experience from his heyday and watching films evolve since. It's surreal and unique. I mean, the game world itself is surreal in a Twin Peaks way, but what's even more surreal is the fact that this game exists at all. I'd say if you're nostalgic for the Monkey Island days, you should get it. If you're too young to be nostalgic, and are wondering what we liked about those games, this is probably the best single game to try in the genre, even if you never play one of these ever again. The price is relatively high compared to other retro games, but it's worth the pricetag.
