Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 3 - Lair of the Leviathan

The Good
I did a review for episode 1 a few months ago, giving it 2/5 meaning i didn't like it. From then till now, 3 more episodes have been released and I played all of them.

No 2 was a bit of an improvement over no 1 in terms of funny dialog ( I'm talking about the bits with Lechuck in it, otherwise it was as boring as no 1 ) and I just hoped that they'll keep this direction and embellish it more, reaching at least the creativity of Escape from MI.

Well to keep a long story short, they did exactly that, in what is the episode of the return of comedy and spirit that made Monkey Island great in the past.

So what's so good?

1. The new characters: no longer potato-head models, these characters seem more carefully designed, with more spirit and distinctive personalities. Morgan Leflay is a worthy new addition to the MI saga, along with Coronado and his lazy-dogs crew.
2. The dialog: This time it is very reminiscent of older Monkey Island games and has a bit of day of the tentacle in it, and not the non stopping blathering of Sam 'n Max episodes, being funny, short, on the spot and creative.
3. The puzzles! Ok that's the perfect return to form! Hats of to Telltale for pulling that off! The puzzles are clever, funny and give the satisfaction and pleasure after solving them that accompanied the legendary adventures of yore. Also they are completely integrated in the story which gives an air of completeness to the episode and shows the real talent of making adventures.
4. The feeling of adventure, the notion that you are part of this world and want to explore, find clever solutions, sympathize with the characters, the soul that the first episode seemed to lack (making it a hollow ensemble of talking, items, potato-heads and MI lore) is all back here reminding me why I so much adored adventure games in the past. Because when done right it's the best f***ing genre! That's why.
5. The wacky story : it's all there and truly zany and combined with good feature no 4) (see above) makes it shine like a baboon's butt :)

The Bad
Unfortunately the low budget of Telltale and a few very wrong choices brought to Tales from Episode 1 (and the whole previous design of the series obviously) stop it from being a perfect 5/5.

1. The graphic engine: needs more detail, better animations, it's too glitchy and slow, it's the same for all telltale games, which brings me to what I want to point out: Monkey Island games need to be totally distinctive! They must not seem samey to all the stuff out there, but only in relevance to each other.
2. The horrible control with the mouse or arrows... what a god-awful choice this remains. Probably the worst aspect of the game.
3. The new face of Guybrush will remain there and haunt us... although I grew used to it, it's still not the best ,for one of the most glorious coward adventurers in gaming history
4. It's an episode but if its so good I really want a bit more!! Make it 100-200 megabytes of more goodness.

The Bottom Line
This is the definite episode of this series along with no.4 (which has the best puzzles in an adventure game since Escape from MI, yes they're THAT good! maybe in par with MI 2 and 3!).

A few bad designing choices from the beginning that characterized the whole series , along with the mediocre episode 1 which remains to remind us how NOT to make an MI game (see my other review), stop this series to be on top with the other MI games.

At least the effort bore fruit, showed some wits (sharper than a sword) , and maybe if there is ever to exist an MI5, the mistakes will be taken into account to achieve perfection. In a future with no MI5, I would be happy to see a new Tales of MI series, with the aforementioned corrections taken place, and the quality of episodes 3 and 4 , in each single new one.