The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

As promised, I actually played another Tales of Monkey Island episode! We can pretend that Ben’s constant asking me about it for months paid off! It’ll make him feel special, maybe.
In any case, moving right along from the first episode, I played the Siege of Spinner Cay, where there was a siege, sort of, but only for about 5 minutes or so.
Still, though, it was pretty great.

The whole episode seemed much shorter than the first one, but I say that was probably because of a distinct lack of bullshit treasure hunting minigames, which is something that was much appreciated. Those weren’t actually very fun in the first game, at least not when you’re doing them like… the fourth time. In any case, I certainly didn’t mind it. It also might have taken longer if I didn’t refer to an FAQs during one or two times where I had an idea for a solution (and it turned out my adventure game intuitions were right, and I was correct each time) but just didn’t want to go searching around for where in the world such an item would be forever. Still, though, I think the fact that I knew the solution most times was a good sign: there were no bullshit cheese wheel puzzles in this episode, which is great.

The humor was also really good during this episode. There were several conversations, mostly with Winslow who makes a great straight man, that really had me laughing. The merpeople of questionable gender also made me grin, not to mention Winslow’s comment of “Don’t go kissing without knowing. I learned that the hard way.” It’s simple, but fun. I mean, if nothing else, there’s a big book of high-larious fish jokes for you to peruse, so, you know, you’ll laugh.

Story-wise, it introduced the Human LeChuck, which is not completely a concept I find entertaining, but at least they did it really well. Guybrush hates him, of course, but they were really nice with making him ambiguous as to whether he’s a bad guy, or a previous bad guy trying to turn things around. It was a nice level of subtlety that I appreciated. The episode, of course, ended with a cliffhanger, but I don’t feel like I can tell you whether or not it was a bullshit cliffhanger, seeing as I can just immediately play the next episode. It was only sort of straight out of Pirates 2. Sort of.

Anyway, the episode was good. But there’s one more thing I need to mention: Goodness, Telltale, can you render a new pirate head? Every single non-essential pirate all has the same head. Even Winslow, a character who one would think would have gotten more attention if he was going to be around for most of the game, is the same pirate head with a different skin tone. I know you all are working on a time limit, but seriously, would it have been that hard to render one more head in between episodes? It just seems cheap.
I also don’t know what I think about this whole “Guybrush with a Hook” thing. I mean, I had learned about it before I played the game, but it still just doesn’t sit right with me. It makes Guybrush look too much like a pirate. “But he is a pirate!” you say, “A mighty pirate!” Well, yes. But he’s a very LAME mighty pirate, and that’s what makes him lovable. He actually isn’t like a pirate at all. Making him seem more like one? That just kind of… annoys me. It seems to be deviating from his character, even if how it happens wasn’t really that out of place. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe nobody else has a problem with it. Who knows.

But it’s fun, either way. Go kiss a merperson, I’ll keep going with Lair of the Leviathan. I’ll tell you how that goes, I’m sure.