LucasArts sent adventure game fans into an ecstasy with their announcement of a remastered, special edition version of their classic game The Secret of Monkey Island; however their combined announcement with TellTale Games that Tales of Monkey Island Season One would be released was far more significant. Sure, every salty seadog would enjoy reliving the glory days of adventure gaming with enhanced graphics, music and voice acting, but how much more enjoyable to find some of our favourite characters in new adventures. On the evidence so far, with two episodes already released, this has not turned out to be a Good Thing… it’s turned out to be a Very Good Thing.
In fact, although Episode 2 was perhaps just a tiny bit disappointing (though still good), Episode 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwal was better than most Monkey Island fans dared hope for. Unlike Escape From Monkey Island, the 3D environment immediately felt “right”; the game had its own style and character, but it was clearly made by people who loved the original games. The characters, puzzles and humour were pretty much perfect, it looked and sounded great, and though obviously not as long as a full-length adventure game, as an episode it didn’t feel too short either. With a storyline that is spread over the four episodes, you could almost view it as one complete game, just delivered in bite-size portions.
TellTale games have pioneered the concept of episodic adventure games, and the concept has (perhaps surprisingly) worked brilliantly. First with their superb re-envisioning of Sam & Max and the Stron Bad games, then more recently with the Wallace & Gromit games and now Tales of Monkey Islands, TellTale are largely responsible for the rebirth of adventure games as a commercially viable genre. While it would be nice to have longer games, which is better - more shorter games or fewer (probably much fewer) long ones? In terms of TellTale’s cashflow the episodic format is probably a real winner compared to spending years on a title that may see the light after a couple of years, and then might not sell particularly well. Though the previous games have been well received, Monkey Island has such a large fanbase that it has instantly become their best-seller. With a new deal tied up with Amazon.com for release of their games, the future looks brither than ever for TellTale. With LucasArts seemingly determined to update many of their back catalogue (a fully voiced Zak McKraken – please?!?) and a few other erstwhile companies ploughing on with new projects – Ceville, Runaway 3, and hopefully many others – we adventure game fans will be better catered for than at anytime since the late eighties / early nineties.
All we need for complete happiness is a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle…
Related posts:
- When The Throttle Stalled
- If you keep abreast of gaming news, you can’t have failed to spot the very...
- Adventure Games
- The point and click adventure is going through a bit of a renaissance period at...
- Post Script Episode 1
- Post Script is a brand new episodic HL2 mod created by Lewis Denby; I spent...
