Escape from Monkey Island

The Good
When talking of recent Hollywood comedies like American Pie or Road Trip, you would most likely describe them as really funny movies, though no necessarily good ones. That description fits perfectly well on Escape from Monkey Island.

The fourth instalment of the famous series of adventure games is still guaranteed to make you laugh. Nice dialogues and the occasional slapstick animation make for a relaxed and humorous ambience that encourages you to press on -- eager to hear the next punch line.
However, the feat of being a funny game is lessened if you take into account that all the good gags are either allusions to past episodes (“Oh yeah? You fight like a cow!”) or even the recycling of humorous mechanisms introduced with Monkey Island 1 (take a closer look at the course of many dialogues). As EFMI contents itself with cycling through all the well-known characters and locations, it neglects the need for originality.

The Bad
A good adventure needs to be thrilling like a film, yet interactive like a computer game. That is to say that its two most important features are the presentation (scenario, characters, plot) and the puzzles. Unfortunately, Escape from Monkey Island is weak in exactly these two categories.

Suppose a friend invited you to her home, and for one reason or the other she didn’t give you her house number. You’d be forced to ring at every door in the entire street, probably going through some embarrassing situations. This is a lot like the puzzles in Escape from Monkey Island: you know the task at hand, but there’s often not the slightest hint on the next step for fulfilling that mission. You’re thus inclined to go from door to door, sorry, location to location, trying anything, sensible or not, to see if you’re lucky.
An example: to enrage one old businessman, Guybrush has to spray cologne at a stuffed animal in the guy’s mansion. This is a strange puzzle all right, but what is more, you are never told that the animal might be of any use, nor that the man might react to the perfume. Consequently, you can only find the solution by guessing. This is a grave mistake in design -- to solve a puzzle, you need to know that it’s there. The majority of puzzles in EFMI are unnecessarily complicated due to a lack of hints and guidance. Don’t get me wrong -- I don’t want to suggest that the solution should be apparent. But the parts of the problem should be. As a mathematician would put it: you cannot solve an equation if there are too many unknowns. It is ample evidence of incapacity if a game forces its players to resort to wild guessing and trial-and-error item usage rather than logical thinking.

Ryan Prendiville has stated in his review that “A few of the puzzles in the game were near impossible, but they were rare.” Although this is true, it is not the point. The point is that not a single puzzle in the game is really cool.

You should think that the pirate scenario is idiot-proof, and to a certain extent this is true. Even though Escape from Monkey Islands stains the pirate flair with a half-hearted attempt at consume criticism, there is still magic in the idea of a Caribbean adventure. However, every scenario is only as good as the characters that make it come alive. The persons populating EFMI are uninspired stereotypes. LucasArts has done a remarkable job at turning Guybrush’s and Elaine’s relationship into the strong-woman-weak-man cliché that even daily soaps are ashamed to use any more. Guybrush is stripped of everything but his childlike naiveté and left to be humiliated at every occasion, pirates are toothless Disney-type cuddly toys, and arch-enemy LeChuck is reduced to a rather clueless brawler with few scenes. Does it even matter that the vindictive, bloodthirsty ghost pirate first appears at Guybrush’s mansion for a brief chat, then walks the streets of the town without anyone seeming to care too much? The plot is weak, full of holes and altogether hardly a reward for the player’s efforts.

Let me give one last comment on the presentation and control of the game. Mark Isaakson said in his review that “The more free flowing gameplay (less use of the mouse) is an interesting move, but in the end, it's a good one.” I do not see where the abolishment of the mouse contributed to a more free flowing gameplay. On the contrary, I am now forced to control the protagonist by hand, aim at objects, avoid bumping into obstacles, scroll endlessly through the inventory and use 11 (!) keys to perform actions, all of which I could do with one single click of the mouse.
Personally, I think the rendered backgrounds with their plastic look to be cold and empty, but that is a matter of taste.

The Bottom Line
Escape from Monkey Island is not a bad game, but it is definitely a disappointment. Lacking the sparkling brilliancy of its predecessors and suffering from some severe mistakes in game design, the weakest episode of the series is also a step backwards for the whole adventure genre.