Escape from Monkey Island

aka: EFMI, Flucht von Monkey Island, Fuga da Ilha dos Macacos, Fuga da Monkey Island, Houdao Da Taowang, La Fuga de Monkey Island, MI4, Monkey Island 4
Moby ID: 2606
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Guybrush Threepwood has finally defeated the zombie pirate LeChuck, and married his sweetheart Elaine Marley. The happy couple is returning home from an exciting honeymoon. But as they arrive on Melee Island, they notice some very strange changes. A mysterious stranger who calls himself Charles L. Charles is organizing a campaign to become the next governor. The Australian businessman Ozzie Mandrill is turning the Caribbean into an attraction for tourists. And on top of that, Elaine's mansion is being demolished! Naturally, it's up to our hero to revert the things back to normal, even if that means traveling to exotic islands and solving puzzles on the way.

Escape From Monkey Island is a direct sequel to The Curse of Monkey island, and is the fourth game in the Monkey Island series. The gameplay relies mainly on inventory-based puzzles and branching dialogues, just like in the previous installments. The interface is similar to that of Grim Fandango: mouse is not used, and the interaction is done via context-sensitive commands that appear on the screen whenever you navigate Guybrush close to an object. The game utilizes pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D character models.

Spellings

  • 猴岛大逃亡 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 猴島小英雄4:逃離猴島 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

389 People (311 developers, 78 thanks) · View all

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Game Scripting
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3D Animation
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 79% (based on 68 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 192 ratings with 15 reviews)

A great game that is bound to please any adventure gamer!

The Good
The graphics look really amazing in this game, the gameplay is great, and the music is well, Monkey Island!

The insults are even better, the humour is great, and this game is really, really, cool, I don’t know if anybody noticed, but Gybrush is so much cooler in this game than he was in episode 3!

You play Gybrush Threepwood, you return from your honeymoon to find that your wife (also the mayor of Melee Island) has been declared dead! You have to go and talk to the lawyers on Lucre Island, while you are there you stumble upon adventure!!!

The Bad
I find nothing wrong with this game.

The Bottom Line
Shiver me timbers and poke me other eye out if this isn’t the coolest game ever, My personal rating for this game is 10 out of 10, as the Voodoo lady would say: I advise you to buy this game!

Windows · by Jim Fun (207) · 2001

One of the worst games ever made.

The Good
The fact that it's a Monkey Island game alone should excite anyone, and it did me. The return of the guy who voiced Guybrush from part 3 was rather good as well.

The Bad
Where to start? Once I heard that they were going to make it a 3D adventure type game, like Grim Fandango I started to worry. But, I still had faith considering it was a Monkey Island game, and they wouldn't let down their fans. Boy was I wrong. Not that I'm saying Grim Fandango was a bad game, I actually loved it, even though it did get boring at times. I just didn't like the graphics, and Monkey Island 4's graphics are even worse. Added to this, the whole perspective which we view Guybrush from seems really distorted and at a weird angle, which really annoyed me. But the most important aspect had to be the gameplay. Man this game bored me so bad I had to use a walkthrough for most of it. It was so...repititive. Considering that the creators were the guys who made Sam & Max and Maniac Mansion, I hoped for a lot more. Oh well.

The Bottom Line
Don't bother. Play Monkey Island 1-3, and forget they even made this one. With news of a Monkey Island 5 in production, I really hope Lucasarts puts their act together and brings back Ron Gilbert...although I doubt it. At least bring back the guys who made part 3 and revert the graphics back to either the style of 1 & 2 or the comic look of 3. Please.

Windows · by Pavan Shamdasani (2) · 2001

More fun than a barrel of monkeys!

The Good
There is one thing you can always count on in a Monkey Island game -- laughs, and this is no exception. Escape From Monkey Island is revamped with 3D environments and the control system has been streamlined and simplified. I like the new controls, a mouse is no longer used and there is no more of the hunting and clicking that plague adventure games. The environments for the most part are okay but it is really the characters that shine. They skins are really wacky and suit the characters. The voice acting (like most Lucasarts games) is top notch. The game is hilarious and will have you playing over just to hear all the jokes.

The Bad
A few of the puzzles in the game were near impossible but they were rare. At times I thought some of the environments felt cold.

The Bottom Line
If you are not familiar with the piratey goodness of Monkey Island I highly recommend getting the first three. If you have played the first ones this one is just as good.

Windows · by Ryan Prendiville (689) · 2000

[ View all 15 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
*Alarm bells ringing, sirens wailing...* DJP Mom (11333) Jun 21, 2007

Trivia

Controls

Escape from Monkey Island emulates the controls of Alone in the Dark right down to double-tapping the up arrow to run; according to its manual and readme, this was in Grim Fandango as well, but was removed at the last minute.

Extras

The PC version came with a "quick-path" walkthrough that explained how to beat the entire game. However, not much detail was put into it, and no secrets were revealed (both to try and persuade the player to buy the full strategy guide). The walkthrough that came with the PC version was written entirely in bright blue ink, screenshots and all. This was probably to deter "helpomaniacs", people who look up what to do next, and then regret they did.

Names

  • The "bad guy" of the game is an Australian named Ozzie Mandrill. A mandrill is a kind of a monkey.
  • There is a character named Marco Pollo in the game. Beside being a parody on the famous traveler Marco Polo, the name also has another meaning: "pollo" is Spanish for "chicken".
  • On Melee Island (TM), if you ask I. Cheese about his family, he'll eventually tell you about his aunt who was so ugly people turned to stone when looking at her. He also tells her name: Gorgon Zola Cheese. "Gorgonzola" is a kind of cheese, while "Gorgon" is a name of a monster in Greek mythology: whoever looks at it turns into stone.

References

  • The SCUMM Bar and LUA Bars appearing in the game are named after two programming languages. SCUMM is the language developed by LucasArts for creating Maniac Mansion (and then many other games), and LUA is a language developed in a Brazilian university.
  • In the Place of Prostheses, with the machine if you enter the right code then you can get one which has the name as 'Manuel J. Calaverus'. This is obviously referring to Manny Calavera in Grim Fandango.
  • Escape from Monkey Island features a mini-game (obligatory to finish the game) called "Monkey Combat". No need to say it is a parody on the Mortal Kombat series.
  • When you are in Lucre Island jail, if you look at the iron maiden, Guybrush would say, "Iron Maiden! Excellent!" This is refering to the movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, where they get arrested in ancient England, and the king says to send them to the iron maiden. Thinking they mean the rock band, Bill and Ted reply "Iron Maiden. Excellent!" then play the air guitar.
  • On Lucre Island (TM), the parfume stand is entitled "Scents and Sensibilities". This is a reference to Jane Austin's book Sense and Sensibility.
  • On Lucre Island, inside the swamp, you can see a crashed X-Wing there.

Awards

  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 04/2009 - One of the "10 Most Terrible Sequels" ( It changed the handling to annoying keyboard controls and many puzzles defy every logic and have to be solved through trial and error. The atmosphere suffers from sterile backgrounds and modern consumption criticism. Because of its humour and the lack of competition it is still the best adventure released in 2000.)
  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2001 - Best Adventure in 2000

Information also contributed by James Isaac, Jiguryo, J. Michael Bottorff, Ol Sverre Bauge, Unicorn Lynx and Xoleras

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Ryan Prendiville.

Macintosh added by Corn Popper. PlayStation 2 added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: Terok Nor, Swordmaster, Itay Brenner, Adam Baratz, Kirschsaft, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, chirinea, Sciere, Ghost Pirate, Solid Flamingo, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger.

Game added November 10, 2000. Last modified March 20, 2024.