"Escape
from Monkey Island provides a good PC-style adventure game to the
Playstation 2, which performs as well if not better than it's
predecessor."
Ahhh!!!! More
Monkey Island! A few years ago with the release of Curse of Monkey
Island, after it's extended hiatus, an itch in the adventure gamer's
mind-eye was scratched. (Ouch! - Omni) After finishing the game,
I was worried that the next game might be a long way's away, but
thankfully, Escape From Monkey Island came out for PCs in October of
2000. LucasArts, never missing a step, decided that it would be a great
game to port to the Playstation 2 (a game going from PC to console, what
will they think of next?) and here is their final product.
For
the uninitiated, the Monkey Island series involves the bumblings of
Guybrush Threepwood, the most swashbuckling buccaneer ever to sail the
Tri-Island region. Now married to his love Elaine, they return to Melee
Island so that Elaine can once again govern. Upon their arrival, they
discover that Elaine has been declared dead and that there is to be an
election for a new governor. Enter the opponent: Charles L. Charles.
(Gee that doesn't look anything like the evil Zombie Ghost Pirate
LeChuck.) Anyways, you are thrown headlong into the action of trying to
resolve the usual series of misunderstandings, problems, and general
weirdness using only your cunning, ability to hold your breath for 10
minutes, and collection of useless items (how else can you refer to an
artificial head?). The puzzles that you must get by in gameplay are
aggravating at times in not only their complexity but in their
completely insane solutions. Almost any item that you find could be the
key to solving the problem but don't count on it - more likely it's
something that you haven't found yet and you're going to be spending
some time backtracking trying to find the missing piece to that puzzle.
Remember that this game is not a traditional adventure game, so remember
that humor is the most important facet of this series and your solutions
should be geared towards thinking that way.
Visually, this
game is identical to the PC version. All of the characters are 3D
rendered but move on a 2D background. It looks really good, but
personally I prefer the Curse of Monkey Island visuals with the painted
backgrounds. Aurally, this game sounds really good but suffers
from a
little glitch that drove me insane at times. For some inexplicable
reason, the speech will sometimes get quieter and then return to normal
in a moment. (Imagine my chagrin at playing with the remote while trying
to watch a cutscene). The last remaining gameplay
problem is the
frequent load times - every time you leave an area expect to wait for a
few moments as well as during transitions on cutscenes, both can be
annoying at times.
Strengths? A
really funny game that incorporates some of the abilities of the PS2
well, such as the Dual Shock controllers that
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rumble whenever something
explodes. The controller layout took much less time to learn on the PS2
than on the PC and is more intuitive. Remember to check out the options
on the game, there are some great things to find on the disk (try the
multiplayer options) as well as some great "making of"
features.
All
in all, Escape from Monkey Island provides a good PC-style adventure
game to the Playstation 2, which performs as well if not better than
it's predecessor. Unfortunately, it does lack the replay value besides
nostalgia which might detract for some but may help increase the
audience to PC-style adventure gaming.