Comments on: Monkey Island 5: First Ep Next Week, New Vidaction

By: Abercrombie and Fitch

Abercrombie and Fitch — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:31:19 +0000

Good information!

By: jalf

jalf — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:01:53 +0000

Ok, so it’s official, LeChuck’s voice actor sucks. But apart from that, Episode 1 was really good imo. The puzzles struck a nice balance between meaningful and guess-I’ll-just-combine-stuff-at-random. Quite a few funnies in there, and all in all, I think they’re off to a really good start.

The controls are weird (what’s wrong with just letting you click where you want to go, like in oh, say, every single other adventure game ever made?), but it’s generally bearable.

By: jalf

jalf — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:38:12 +0000

Well, the reviews so far are pretty good:

Joystiq: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/07/review-tales-of-monkey-island-launch-of-the-screaming-narwhal/

Destructoid: http://www.destructoid.com/review-launch-of-the-screaming-narwhal–138653.phtml (9/10 + editors choice)

Now if only Telltale would actually RELEASE the damn thing.

By: Swainy

Swainy — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:06:58 +0000

Someone shut LeChuck up. I can’t stand his voice acting no longer.

By: Monele

Monele — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:24:10 +0000

Hmm, to be honest, I LeChuckled twice, which is much more than I expected from a TellTale game… But I’m only mildly curious about it, and the 3D, let’s admit it, is putting me off :/

By: MusicallyInspired

MusicallyInspired — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:42:46 +0000

Sigh. You all lose the internet. HARD. TMI looks awesome. And humorously accurate as well as true to the original series. Get over your nostalgia and enjoy the 21st century. It’s Monkey time again!!

By: Demikaze

Demikaze — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:28:38 +0000

And I also directly referenced the technological restraints that were imposed upon the first 2 MI games.

By: Demikaze

Demikaze — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:18:34 +0000

@Wulf

Sorry, but I think you misinterpreted my post. I’m not arguing that I want a return to 2d, I’m saying that they did what they could and it happened to work bloody well. However, today, the amount of work that has to go into realising a 3d world is astonishing. We demand a certain level of execution now and this doesn’t seem to have had that treatment. I’m still reserving judgement until I see the thing for myself though.

By: v.dog

v.dog — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:22:22 +0000

I’m glad now that I hadn’t played the original games as a child. Otherwise part of me would have died.

By: Dracko

Dracko — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:49:11 +0000

Wulf, no I don’t. Both look horribly dated and overly cartoonish and 3D and shit. Oh, and really unfunny and trying too hard. Where’s the problem?

By: Tom Davidson

Tom Davidson — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:27:35 +0000

Wulf, I’d much rather have well-drawn 2D scenery and some mostly static but attractive sprites than something that sits squarely in the Uncanny Valley while simultaneously being smaller and less flexible in scale and scope. IMO, a game shouldn’t bother being three-dimensional unless it intends to use that third dimension in some way. I can think of so many franchises that, in moving to 3D animation, lost not only much of their variety and depth but also their charm and loveliness.

In the old days, if you wanted to draw a messy table covered in stained teacups, you just drew one. And if you decided on the spur of the moment to allow the player’s avatar to drink out of one of those teacups, you just had to draw that table minus the teacup, then draw a few static sprites of an arm with a teacup at the end of it. Nowadays, you’d have to render the table, each item on it — including all the fancy textures — and figure out the points of intersection between the cup object, any “liquid” inside it, and the hand. Sure, at some point diminishing returns kicks in — if you need to animate a lot of people drinking from things, it’s probably easier to build that routine into your engine than to draw sprites to represent it — but for the vast majority of old-school adventure game scenarios in particular (as opposed to the sharply limited “interactions” of modern 3D adventures) it seems obvious that sprite-based design was a lot more conducive to creative flexibility.

By: Quests

Quests — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:13:04 +0000

Wow, people actually like MI3… the game NOT made by the creator of… everything sir Gilbert and the other 2 guys.

This is beyond insanity, the 3rd and 4th games were utter junk.