Players should be at least familiar with the recurring characters from previous games to fully appreciate Tales of Monkey Island, since there are a couple of in-jokes from past games, but newcomers should be able to quickly figure things out. The story takes place sometime after the last game and Guybrush has fully established himself as a Mighty Pirate. However, this is still Guybrush we're talking about, and in his usual attempt to defeat LeChuck and rescue his wife Elaine, something goes terribly wrong. Guybrush ends up getting washed ashore on Flotsam Island, where the winds constantly blow inwards, making escape nearly impossible. As usual, it's up to Guybrush to overcome small issues like impossibility. One last thing... Guybrush's latest encounter with LeChuck leaves his hand infected with the voodoo Pox of LeChuck, giving it an ill tempered mind of its own.

Tales of Monkey Island has everything that a Monkey Island game should have. The original music composer of the series, Michael Land, makes a return and Dominic Armato reprises his role as the voice of Guybrush Threepwood. There's plenty of humor and challenging puzzles that sometimes involve substituting one object with another. Oh yes, the player also has deep pockets to store the tons of stuff he happens to pick up along the way. However, Tales of Monkey Island leans on the episodic format more so that probably any other game developed by TellTale. Unlike the Sam & Max series, where each episode was an individual story that built up to a large story arc, Tales of Monkey Island truly feels like a game divided into five parts. Therefore, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal sets up a lot of things that won't be resolved until upcoming episodes release. As a result, all the loose ends make for a less than satisfying ending to the chapter.

The player's primary goal with Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is to escape from Flotsam Island, which provides a great opportunity for players to get back into the groove of Monkey Island and its brand of humor. Some of the puzzles require a Monkey Island state of mind, for lack of a better term. Players will have to put their imaginations to use to figure out how to best use objects to solve different problems. One brilliant puzzle requires the player to listen to the sounds of the jungle to find the right path, but unfortunately, we had to turn down the music to play through it. The game includes a hint system, where if player seems lost, Guybrush will offer up a suggestion on where to head next. However, there's no way to get an immediate hint for a specific puzzle when you need it. As a result, the game's pacing takes a bit of a hit as players wait for help to come through.

One last thing we found troublesome is the movement system, which gets rid of the traditional point and click method except when interactive objects are involved. In its place is a system where players need to hold down the mouse button to move Guybrush in the direction of the pointer. This works decently for the most part, but the interface sometimes gets in the way. There are a couple of occasions where we accidentally walked Guybrush too far in the wrong direction and had to start a puzzle all over again. Eventually, we ended up using the keyboard to move around and the mouse to interact with the world.

Although we're usually fans of the episodic format, we can't help wondering if it really works here, since it will take five months to get the full experience. Yet despite the game's shortcomings, we couldn't help falling under Monkey Island's voodoo spell. There's a variety of entertaining characters, the puzzles provide a fantastic challenge and the wit is as sharp as ever. Overall, Tales of Monkey Island offers an extremely promising start to bringing the series back to swashbuckling action.

Download the Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal Demo
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