Spitting the sand of Monkey Island from my mouth, I wondered if the life of a mighty pirate was all it was cracked up to be. I'd ignored recent events that should have been warning shots across the bow of my soul, from my wife's brush with death to the anti-pirate ramblings of an Australian gazillio...
Spitting the sand of Monkey Island from my mouth, I wondered if the life of a mighty pirate was all it was cracked up to be. I'd ignored recent events that should have been warning shots across the bow of my soul, from my wife's brush with death to the anti-pirate ramblings of an Australian gazillionaire. If only I'd chosen a different path, LeChuck might still be dead and the Ultimate Insult might have remained a mystery. If I'd never picked up a sword, the grog-swilling pirates of the Tri-Island Area might be unthreatened by the forces of gentrification and demonic heckfire. If only... suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time. Time for the biggest battle of my swashbuckling life.
- Excerpted from "The Memoirs of Guybrush Threepwood: The Monkey Island Years"
Fourth in the legendary Monkey Island series of graphic adventures!
An original, cinematic story full of drama, sociopathic parrots, and a villain with a sinister agenda!
Dozens of lusciously rendered backgrounds!
Hundreds of puzzles to challenge both novice and veteran pirates... er, adventurers!
New jokes! New puns! New insults! And more monkeys than the three previous Monkey games combined!
Moon-logic puzzles and randomized minigames add up to an unfun experience that is best left unplayed.
No, it is not worth a go just because you're curious to see how bad it is.
...the hate towards all things pirate, for starters. And bland scenery. And an anti-capitalist message. And puzzles that make absolutely no sense, and at times you just can see they were found so easy, they later re-adjusted them without a second thought, like stucking the flaming boat requireing that timed puzzle with grog, or infecting the walking stick.
I didn't notice either, I hated plundering items, and solving various puzzles simultaniously. Glad they fixed this aspect.
Also, who needed pesky tongue-and-cheek corrupting morals of our youngs with insults, right? I'm so glad now that's just monkey-talk!
I'm rly glad they removed the FUN, everyone complained about that.
I'm glad we escaped the Monkey Island franchise with this!
Easily the worst game in the series. I'm not surprised that Tales From Monkey Island makes no reference to the events of the game. Monkey Kombat is terrible as well as the new villain. Some fiendish enough puzzles but the humor isn't there and even the great voice casting doesn't save it.
For Monkey Island completionists only. For everyone else, you can skip straight from Curse of Monkey Island to Telltale's Tales of Monkey Island. Shame we never got Tales 2.
Another review of this game here on GOG says that Escape from Monkey Island is to the Monkey Island series what King's Quest 7 was to the KIng's Quest series: people hated it initially, but after awhile a die-hard group of fans started defending its virtues. This is close to the truth, but note quite spot on. A more apt comparison would be that this game is like King's Quest EIGHT: a decent game in its own right, certainly one with a number of redeeming qualities, but not a game that deserves to (in ANY universe) be considered a part of the same series as the other games bearing the same name.
-Sudden shift from 2D to 3D grahpics when the technology wasn't quite ready to handle the transition? Check.
-Sudden change in gameplay style, including a number of puzzles that made absolutley no sense and could really only be solved by a truly mind-boggling feat of trial error? Check.
-Sudden drop in the writing quality, including a certain level (very high, in the case of MI4) retconning of previous titles? Check.
If it had been based on a different IP, this would've been a 3-star game. But as a Monkey Island game, it's just awful.