Escape from Monkey Island (PC)

Developer:

LucasArts

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

Windows, Mac, PlayStation 2

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Super Adventures is going on another break (sorry about that), but first I'm going to finally fix a gaping hole in my site. I wrote about Curse of Monkey Island in 2013, two years later I followed it up with Secret and Tales, and then two years after that I played LeChuck's Revenge. Not the recommended order I know, but if I always did what people recommended I wouldn't be playing Escape from Monkey Island at all. It's been another two years since I played a Monkey Island game though, so I have to play Escape now to continue the pattern!

This is the fourth of the games and for the better part of a decade it seemed like it was going to be the last of them. It wasn't though, which is fortunate because it would've been a bit of a depressing note to leave the series on. Not that Escape from Monkey Island is outright hated by fans, in fact it got good reviews, but it's often considered to be the weakest of them.

It's not the only classic adventure game sequel to suffer after the switch to 3D though, as there's also Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, Simon the Sorcerer 3D... actually it'd be quicker to name the ones that pulled it off. Uh, Sam and Max: Save the World maybe? The transition from being the prettiest 2D games to the ugliest 3D games with the worst controls didn't go well for them, but the game design seemed to go downhill in general. Even the reasonably well liked Gabriel Knight 3 gave the world the cat hair moustache puzzle that killed adventure games forever. Or maybe they died off because increasing budgets due to 3D visuals and voice acting made them increasingly unprofitable. Could be a bit of both.

Speaking of things disappearing forever but then actually coming back a while later, Super Adventures is taking the next two months off, so I've given you a few more screenshots than usual to keep you going. If you ration them out, one screenshot a day, it should get you most of the way through. But if you find yourself thinking 'When is this damn post going to end???', then don't worry, I'll shut up just as soon as I've achieved something on the second island.

This will of course mean there'll be SPOILERS for the events up to that point. Oh, and for the earlier games as well.

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Always nice to see a custom Gold Guy logo at the start of a LucasArts game.

Out of curiosity I went back and checked to see what the other games did with the logo and it turns out not much. Monkey Island 1 predated the logo, Monkey Island 2 introduced the logo, and Monkey Island 3 just had it drawn on a map. Tales of Monkey Island was by Telltale, but the post-2005 version of the logo still made an appearance on a piece of paper floating in water.

Hey, while I'm boring you with facts, I'm going to dig up my ancient LucasArts adventure game timeline image that I've used on a bunch of posts already.

(Lines only vaguely point to the right month, especially for the earlier games.)

It's been ages since I've had an excuse to drag this picture out.

I've got half the games covered now, so I've still got some work to do. But we're right at the end of the chart here, as Escape from Monkey Island wasn't just LucasArts' last Monkey Island, it was their last adventure game ever. Not because it wasn't (moderately) successful, especially on PC and in Europe, it's just that all their later adventures got cancelled, and then LucasArts itself was cancelled. So we never got Full Throttle: Payback or Sam & Max: Freelance Police. Just lots of Star Wars games.

Another thing I didn't get was a difficulty select screen at the start, like in the last two Monkey Islands. No Monkey Lite or Mega-Monkey mode this time, it's full Monkey or nothing at all.

But I did get this piece of artwork filling my monitor screen!

The last two games featured sepia-tinted illustrations in their opening credits, but here the credits appear over close up images of Guybrush and Elaine's ugly-ass boat that drift away and fade out when it's time to reveal the next image. I ain't keen on it.

They even managed to screw up the theme music, by not screwing around with it. Every Monkey Island game besides this one has a slightly different version of the theme, but this is really obviously recycles the Curse of Monkey Island theme and it feels wrong somehow. Like the game's an imposter wearing the skin of a genuine Monkey Island to pass itself off.

Speaking of wrong, the intro begins with an extreme close up of this face:

I can't even describe all the ways this face bothers me, so I'll just pick one thing. Something really trivial and petty. Hmm... I don't like the way his eye highlights have a shadow on them. The video compression's not too bad though.

The game continues on from Curse of Monkey Island's abrupt ending, where Guybrush and Elaine saved the day, got married and sailed off on the their honeymoon. Now they're sailing back home, which gives Guybrush's creepy eyes an opportunity to give us a summary of the events that brought him here, starting with the time he washed up on Mêlée Island™ and decided that he wanted to be a pirate.

No, don't infect the first game with this art style too! It's like they've tried to meet Guybrush's Monkey Island 1 and Monkey Island 3 looks halfway, except in 3D, and it's not great.

They've also added a bit to his backstory story, as I don't think we knew that he'd been shipwrecked on Mêlée Island™ in the first game. First time we saw him he was asking for directions so it's not implausible.

We also get to see his nemesis LeChuck, reimagined three times over! Well okay the third one is pretty close to his look in Curse, but I'm fairly sure he didn't look like Ghost Hagrid in the first game, and I don't know what the hell they've done with his zombie look from LeChuck's Revenge. He's supposed to have a huge beard, that's kind of a plot point! Also he's supposed to look like Steve Purcell's amazing box art, because it's amazing.

Guybrush carries on narrating, until Elaine finally yells at him and the camera pulls back to reveal that he's manacled to the mast of his ship and everyone else on deck is currently very busy fighting off a swarm of identical clone pirates.
 

How Guybrush ended up in manacles is never explained.

It's also never explained why the pre-rendered cutscenes look worse than the real time graphics. I mean I presume they made them so low-polygon so they could switch between rendered and real time without it being jarring (plus it meant they could use the same assets), but the cutscene's not just basic, it's broken. Look at Guybrush's shoulder, and Elaine's leg clipping through her dress. Plus she's floating. I've heard that the artists struggled with the tools they were stuck with, but it seems like they struggled most with the videos.

And they can't blame Guybrush's outfit on technical difficulties, that's all on them. The black coat he was wearing in the ending of Curse looked so much better.

Curse of Monkey Island (PC)

I hope you appreciate how much work I had to put in to take this shot by the way, as I had to finish the entire game. Actually I just renamed the cutscene files and turned the ending video into the intro.

One thing I noticed when going straight from Curse to Escape is how they kept Guybrush's voice actor but changed Elaine from an English actor to an American one! This is one change I can actually get behind though, as I think I like Elaine #2 just a little bit more than Elaine #1. Original Elaine was the one invited back for Tales and the Special Edition remakes, so I suppose the developers had other opinions.

Anyway the pre-rendered video's over, so here's what the gameplay looks like. It looks pretty much the same, except with less obvious seams on the models, though that's not much of a surprise seeing most of the screen is a pre-rendered background (the games didn't go full real time 3D until Tales).

There's one obvious important thing missing here, and I'm not talking about the box with all the verbs in as that was replaced with a verb coin in the third game. What's missing is the mouse cursor!

The game's built on the same GrimE engine as Grim Fandango and has a similar aversion to pointing and clicking. This time I'm controlling Guybrush directly and everything must be done with the keyboard or a controller, though right now all I can really do is shuffle left and right around the mast. It's a smart way to introduce the control system really, as it straps players down and forces them to figure out the fundamentals to proceed without inflicting a tutorial on them.

So now I have this beautiful set of keys to remember. Though to be fair they can all be redefined. I can also finally use that 3D acceleration feature that Curse of Monkey Island put in the options as a joke. The new 'multiplayer' feature is sadly non-functional however, so I can't get Bobbin Theadbare to join and help me out.

Okay I'm going to move Guybrush over to face that brazier full of hot coals, cycle through to highlight "Look at brazier full of hot coals" it my list of list of options, and then press 'U' to Use/Talk to it.

Crap, I think that just broke the game. Yep, it's dead.

I was surprised at how great it was running in Windows 10 off the original CDs, but it seems like this is as far as it wants to go for me. Fortunately I have a plan B...

Alright I'm running the game in ResidualVM now. It doesn't look absolutely identical, but it's 99.8% of the way there so I'm happy. Still no mouse controls though.

Hmm, 'Kick red hot chunk o' coal at pile of hot coals'? No that doesn't sound right...

I know, I'll shift Guybrush over to face that fancy gold cannon on the right and kick the chunk at the fuse! It's funny how there's no doubt that he'll nail it with his first shot; he truly is a mighty pirate.

Holy shit, was that a voodoo cannon ball he just fired? He just wrecked that entire giant ship with one shot! Plus that fire looks like some fake-ass voodoo fire to me.

Next time they should try firing the cannons before they're boarded, it seems to work pretty well.

Guybrush's ship is still covered in identical crappy-looking pirates, but while they're distracted by their boat sinking, Elaine and her men pull pistols on them and gain the upper hand.

Man, I still can't get over how they bad this looks, with their low-res eyes, the seams on their faces, their hands clipping through their weapons, and the fact they're identical.

I realise that I'm being unfair about the graphics, seeing as the game came out in the ancient times of the PlayStation and N64 era, where Solid Snake's pointy face was considered cutting edge, but it's mostly the art style I'm criticising. Mostly. Plus it's not like I've forgotten what graphics looked like at the time, I visit the 90s every week or so!

Final Fantasy IX had the advantage of being allowed to look good in its pre-rendered cutscenes instead of having to match the in-game graphics, but it's a good example of where CGI was at the time. Just don't try to click the image to see a bigger version, because that's the actual resolution. No One Lives Forever in the middle shows off what PC games could do in real-time in November 2000, and Shenmue on the right is just ridiculous.

This isn't a great comparison though, as the Monkey Island series has always had a far more exaggerated and cartoony look to it. Wait, hang on, no it hasn't!

The Secret of Monkey Island (VGA)

This is what the games started out looking like! They only went full cartoon in the third game because it was easier to animate.

Anyway, back in Escape, Guybrush and Elaine celebrate his heroism with a hug and a heart shape appears around them, because that apparently seemed like a good idea to whoever put the cutscene together. Cutscenes are skippable by the way, though skipping the story in an adventure game probably isn't a great idea first time through.

Hey the act screen doesn't look so bad! The earlier games split the story into parts, not acts, and the screen used to look like less like a calender, but I kind of like the animated 3D characters on it. Not so keen on the text formatting though.

ACT I: THINGS TO DO ON MÊLÉE ISLAND™ WHEN YOU'RE DEAD

The ship arrives at Mêlée Island™, but Guybrush is too busy bragging to listen to his new wife tell him to keep the fragile hat box on top, and so the fragile hat box gets crushed.

Guybrush comes off as a real self-obsessed git in this scene and it's got me wondering this is how other people see him when I'm the one doing stuff and choosing what he says. Because I do not like this Guybrush.

Though if you watch the scene carefully you'll notice that the purple hat box he squashed was already there when he took the fragile box off his wife, so Guybrush actually followed his instructions and crushed a completely different box. But don't look too carefully, or you'll notice his terrible belt buckle. I mean what the hell is this belt buckle? It's rubbish is what it is.

Elaine's pretty bad as well, with the way she's going on about the crowds of adoring citizens that'll no doubt be waiting at the dock to greet their returning governor. Though to be fair it's hard to say she's out of character when we didn't get to see all that much of her in the other games.

Anyway no one shows up to greet them except their old friend Timmy the Monkey. Wait, who the fuck is Timmy the Monkey? And what happened to my shadow? I had a proper shadow when I was shackled to the mast, not this rubbish little oval!

The characters do a Lassie routine for a bit, trying to work out what the monkey's trying to communicate to them, until they finally simultaneously deduce that there's trouble at their mansion, and run over there.

Yep that's definitely trouble. This gentleman with the Dennis the Menace shirt and vulture neck is legally obligated to destroy our mansion with this here catapult, and he's going to keep try flinging them rocks until one finally hits. He's also saying his coordinates out loud which seems like an important clue.

Apparently the reason for the mansion destroying is that Elaine has been declared dead, so she's going to work on getting herself declared undead and wants Guybrush to do some stuff for her while she's gone.

This means I now have two objectives:

1. Stop the catapult.
2. Speak to her lawyer on Lucre Island™.

I decided to try talking to the man with the catapult first. It won't work, but it might give me some leads to follow. Actually I tried walking to him first, but that just got me shouted at. Walking to the mansion's off the table for now too, as Guybrush doesn't want to be in it when it's hit.

Man, it won't even let me click the dialogue options with the mouse. The mouse is forbidden. Though at least I'm selecting actual replies instead of dialogue icons like in Sam and Max: Hit the Road. In fact this game has no icons whatsoever it seems.

My short chat has taught me two things: first, the numbers are basically irrelevant gibberish; the important thing is that he can hit the cactus on the right consistently and he's trying to make adjustments using that as his starting point. Second, if I give him a snack he'll leave his catapult unguarded for a moment for me to mess with it and force him to reset it back to firing at the cactus.

So I'm going into town to look for a snack.

The Secret of Monkey Island (MS-DOS)

This is what the town looked like in the first game, at least in the VGA version of the game. I'm displaying the screenshot stretched in super-blurry-vision for a change to fix the aspect ratio and make it a fairer comparison. It's funny how the first two Monkey Islands were basically widescreen if you take the verbs and inventory away, which is what the Special Editions did I suppose. It makes Curse and Escape look weirdly dated by comparison, despite them being released in the opposite end of the decade.

And here's the same town in Escape. They haven't just updated it a little, they've redesigned it entirely! (Plus it's now 3am instead of 10pm).

It always bothers me when a game or movie etc. tries to appeal to nostalgia, while also making the thing we're supposed to be nostalgic about unrecognisable. "It's the thing you love, only entirely different!" The way my brain works, when I look at this semi-charmless 3D rendered bizarro version of the town all I see are mistakes.

Though they did keep the door joke, where if you walk into a building you come right back out of an entirely different one. Except for the Voodoo Lady's shop that is. Hey I should drop in and have a chat actually, that's usually a good way to start in these games.

Man, these controls are awkward. There are two options: camera relative (like the PlayStation Final Fantasy games) and character relative (like the PlayStation Resident Evil games), and both are a pain in the ass.

Camera relative is a lot more comfortable to use, and it's the only way to play the PlayStation 2 version, but the game keeps switching camera angles whenever I cross invisible lines. I can be walking upwards one moment, then suddenly I'm another screen turned around the other way, so my character's now walking downwards... back to the screen they came from!

Character relative gives you tank controls, which isn't great even at the best of times. But in this they've made it worse, as Guybrush gets deflected 90 degrees whenever I walk too close to a piece of furniture I might want to investigate. It's especially annoying when I'm holding the run button (which is always), as he starts bouncing around the screen like it's a pinball table.

The awkward controls are made even worse by the fact that I have to walk over to things myself to investigate them, it's like I'm playing King's Quest 1 or something! In fact I have to walk over to see what can be investigated, as there's no way to sweep the screen with the mouse (and no 'highlight interactive objects' button either). The controls would've been fine if I was playing in first person, but when the camera's this far back it's not good!

Anyway, I tried using each of the fingers on this handy table and Guybrush said "Nothing happened" the exact same way each time, so I'm out of ideas. Maybe I'm supposed to come back to summon the Voodoo Lady later.

This is a Monkey Island game, so before I can leave the island I need to get a ship and a crew. Another one I mean. I can't use the one from the intro because... I'm not sure the game ever says.

Fortunately I've found two potential crew members standing just down the road from the Voodoo Lady's house. It's Carla the Swordmaster and Otis the victim of society from the first game! We sailed to Monkey Island together! Though Guybrush doesn't seem to recognise them yet.

PlayStation 2

Here's the PlayStation 2 port for comparison. The text is the obvious difference, but if you look closely everyone's wearing slightly puffier clothes, thanks to the increased polygon count. Doesn't make Guybrush's coat look any less rubbish though.

It shouldn't be too hard to get these two to join my crew. All I need to do is get them to stop screaming "HOLY JUMPING MOTHER OF GOD NO" whenever I bring up the idea of sailing with me again, and maybe pay them or something I dunno.

I don't even know what their problem is. If I remember right they were busy sunbathing the whole trip, so I had to climb into a cannon and fire myself over to the island alone. Then once I was done there we all sailed home together afterwards. Though it is possible to get an alternate ending if you sink the ship by launching a rock into it.

Oh man, this is set in the timeline where Guybrush was dumb enough to sink his own ship and crew with a boulder isn't it? That explains so much.

What the hell? What's the Scumm Bar doing over here? Did they pick it up and carry it from the docks?

The Secret of Monkey Island (MS-DOS)

It used to be right next to the water, and it looked entirely different. They only thing they've kept the same is the smiley face on the sign and even that's not in the right place!

Granted the bar's always been a bit weird, as the interior didn't match the exterior in basically any way, but I liked that exterior!

Inside I met a couple of dart players and convinced them to show off their skills by throwing a dart at 'that guy over there'. 

So now I have a permanent hole in my monitor screen... but only in this room. This is raising so many questions.

They wouldn't join my crew and neither will the bartender, plus I couldn't swipe any of the darts either. I'm sure I'll achieve something in this game eventually, but it hasn't happened yet.

Further in I met the owner, who intends to use Insult Arm Wrestling to protect his bar from being taken over by a scurrilous Australian land developer who's been using strong-arm tactics to buy up all the land here. The plot's starting to emerge! I'm not keen on insults spreading to other activities though. You never saw Errol Flynn knocking an opponent off balance with a cutting taunt during an arm-wrestling contest! They're just running the joke into the ground now.

Man, am I ever going to get an inventory item in this game? I can't even steal jerky pretzels from a drunken sailor on his birthday!

Hold on, I'm getting an idea. If I can persuade the pirate with the dart skills to throw one at the balloon, that would distract the birthday pirate from the pretzels. Then I'll have the snack I need to distract the demolition pirate with the catapult.

The Secret of Monkey Island (MS-DOS)

My balloon popping pretzel plan actually worked! Now I can get the catapult aimed at the cactus whenever I want. Doesn't really solve anything on its own though, so now I'm hiking across Mêlée Island™ looking for anything else that isn't nailed down.

Only the island doesn't look like this anymore. Now it looks like this:  

Doesn't look as different from the first game as I expected, but it's still different. Looks like Stan's moved his ships down near Captain Smirk's house, and Meathook's built a bridge so I don't need to use the rubber chicken to get over to his house anymore.

There's another difference between the games: now I can jump straight to the map with a single button press without having to walk out of town first. That's a change I can appreciate.

I tried recruiting Meathook for my crew, but he told me to finish my wife's errands first. Then he told me that he knew I was that Australian land developer out to steal his house because the real Guybrush was declared dead along with his wife. Poor fellow, our trip to Monkey Island has obviously driven him quite mad.

So now I'm down at the harbour instead.

I went over to chat to the purple hotdog woman, and she turned out to be the Chief Assistant Shipyard Regulator, Harbor Operations, Melée Island. But she doesn't want to give me a boat. As far as she's concerned, even if Elaine is alive she won't be governor for long as Mister Charles is going to win the next election. More set up for the plot!
 
Well, if I can't have a boat I'm at least taking the anachronistic inner tube lying next to the equally anachronistic drinks machine. I figured there'd be at least a good few decades between the two, but I just looked it up and they're apparently both around 150 years too modern to be showing up on this island.

Anyway, I don't remember much about the game, but I do remember what I need this giant rubber band for.

Now I finally have an excuse to show what the inventory screen looks like... though I'll wait until I get more items.

I put the inner tube around the cactus, distracted the catapult operator with a pretzel, then messed with his settings so that he had to reset it. He fired the catapult and Loony Tunes physics did the rest for me, bouncing the boulder back and knocking the catapult off the cliff. Where it exploded.

Mission complete!

BUT THEN, FIVE SECONDS LATER

The game didn't even give me a moment to enjoy my success as Charles L. Charles chose this exact minute to come over and introduce himself... as the next Governor of Mêlée Island™. Man I hate that man's belt. Great voicing acting performance by that guy from The Terminator but I can't stand his horrible belt. The 'smudgy distorted textures' look really isn't working for the game.

Well at least I can finally get inside my own mansion now.

The Secret of Monkey Island (MS-DOS)

It's been ages since I visited the Governor's Mansion, and back then I wasn't entirely welcome. But now I finally get to explore the place, put my feet up, and treat it like my own home. Maybe even see what the room behind that wall looks like, the one with the tremendous dangerous-looking yak and the gopher hoard in it.

Actually I'm stuck in just this one room, which has been entirely redecorated in the meantime. Now it's all made from chocolate.

We get to see a bit more of the relationship between Guybrush and Elaine here, and to be honest she comes across more like a mother trying to get her young son out of the house and playing with his friends so she can get on with her work. I feel like the writers' mental image of who these characters are doesn't quite line up with my mental image, and it's jarring.

Anyway another one of those surprise camera angle changes revealed a pile of contracts for cushy government jobs, so I got Elaine to sign them for Carla and Otis. Then I told her how the harbour master didn't respect my authority and got her gubernatorial symbol. Turns out talking to Elaine solves all my problems, and I never had a chance of getting my boat and crew before unlocking the mansion.

But getting the boat and crew wasn't enough as I'm still missing a navigator. After going around talking to everyone again I discovered that the owner of the Scumm Bar is willing to do the job. But only if I can teach him some new insults and beat him at arm wrestling.

A chair flew underneath Guybrush's ass from across the room, the dialogue options popped up, and the arm wrestling was on. Though all I had to do was match up the comeback to the insult, over and over and over. In fact I think I might have used all of them in the end, it was exhausting. But it got the job done and now Mr Cheese is on my crew.

It's not that weird that Guybrush can beat people in sword fights, it's a skill he's been trained in and that gets a lot of practice at, but he just beat someone in a test of strength. I guess I should've realised he was pretty strong with all the stuff he manages to lift up and shove down his pants, but now it's been confirmed.

With my three crew members and my ship I'm finally free to automatically travel to Lucre Island™. Now for the fun part: talking to lawyers.

Man, the Tri-Island Area is getting crowded these days. Plus the three islands it's named for are Mêlée, Booty, and Plunder (all governed by Elaine) and one of them isn't even on this map! Though hang on, wasn't Booty island below Phatt island in the other games? Or am I just getting them mixed up again like I always do.

Curse of Monkey Island (PC)

Nope I was actually right this time. It's no wonder I kept getting confused about where the two islands are when the games were sneakily moving them around.

Also this is that LucasArts logo map from Curse I mentioned at the start!

After arriving on Lucre Island™ I went to visit Elaine's lawyers, but they want me to wait around for a while and the boat needs fixing, so now I'm stuck here. Though they did give me a letter to read. It's from Elaine's grandfather, and was meant to be delivered when she got married.

SOON, AT LUCRE ISLAND

Oh great, the letter contains warnings about the danger of the Ultimate Insult. Man, these games have really taken that insult sword fighting joke and driven it deep deep into the ground.

Lucre Island™ is even more bizarre looking than the reimagined Mêlée but I'm enjoying the game more now I think. Mostly because I've switched over to using my controller instead of the keyboard, but also because Guybrush has changed his bloody outfit to something closer to the first game.

The letter also mentioned a safe deposit box so I suppose I should go over to the bank and open that.

SOON, AT THE BANK

I should've known that Guybrush's worst enemy would be himself.

Fake Guybrush took the chest and everything in it and now he's hanging around outside the vault to do a bit more thievery and thoroughly ruin my reputation. Guybrush isn't a thief! Well I mean he is, it's pretty much his job description, but he only robs from boats, graves and anywhere else there's something handy lying around.

So now I have to deal with Elaine being declared dead, Charles L. Charles trying to take her house and job, an Australian land developer buying up everyone's property and a thief framing me for bank robbery. I feel like I should be writing all this down to keep track of it. Oh wait, I just did.

Though I'm going to keep playing just long enough to bring fake Guybrush in and then I'm turning it off I think. I'm already an hour into a ten hour game... which incidentally makes this the second longest Monkey Island after Tales (each game's longer than the previous one).

First thing I need to do is escape the vault, which means I can finally show off my inventory screen in all its glory! Some characters make snide comments when Guybrush gets his inventory out of his pants in public, but it's an alright system I reckon. I much prefer a Tomb Raider-style circle of floating 3D items to the way Grim Fandango had Manny pull objects out of his coat one at a time. Not as good as just putting them all on screen in boxes though.

This is a ridiculous puzzle, as I have to wedge a broken sword into the door, then insert three sponges and pour grog on them so that they expand. I haven't done a Mythbusters test, but I'm fairly sure that wouldn't even work in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Though to be fair it took me like 3 seconds to work out, due to them being the only objects in the room, aside from a handkerchief and a music box.

I knew those other items were for later though, as the game cunningly forced me to pick them up by putting the grog and a sponge behind them. I also have to give the game credit for explaining why the grog didn't eat through the hinges by itself (it's mellow grog).

Well I got arrested, but fortunately Inspector Canard is happy enough to let me wander the island freely until the judge gets here. I've got a Voodoo Anklet of Extreme Discomfort to keep me from leaving, but I can do whatever else I need to in order to clear my name....

... except for checking inside the bank for evidence.

Man that's an ugly looking bank, and I'm not just talking about the textures. The buildings in the earlier games had plenty of distorted cartoon perspective going on, but they were still recognisably buildings you could imagine finding on a Caribbean island in more swashbuckling times.

I tried getting in through the sewers, using the broken sword to get the manhole cover open, but Guybrush took one look in there and changed his mind, saying that it's dark and it stinks. There's still a whole town full of shops to visit and people for me to chat to though. All full of red herring objects I may never be able to take but I still have to examine.

I'm not sure why the game's started to shove the subtitles into the corner of the screen now. Well, except to make it obvious who's talking.

So far I've learned that the thief ran off towards the deepest forests and that he has a duck phobia, which both seem like crucial clues. I also saw that Australian land developer show up and learned the shop owners opinions about him and what he's doing. The game never gets distracted from its theme for long.

Right, I'm going to check what's through the deepest forests then.

Yay it's a misty swamp maze. And an X-Wing!

I have to be honest, I'd remembered that Luke's X-Wing had crashed somewhere around here and I've been paddling around for bloody ages trying to get it to randomly appear. This is one of those random screen mazes like in the first game where it's impossible to find your way around without a map, and Guybrush says as much, so I've got to come back when I've got one.

It's also the first place I've noticed an animation glitch after switching to ResidualVM

It took a bit of gymnastics for him to get in the right position to pick up the paddle is all. He was fine afterwards.

I gave up on the swamps for now and headed to the third destination on the island map, which turned out to be the Australian land developer's house!

Ozzie Mandrill was kind enough to explain his sinister plan to me, explaining that he dreams of a Caribbean filled with tourists spending their money at his family-oriented pirate themed restaurants and resorts. A nice safe facsimile of their culture, with all the pirates re-educated to work in the service industry.

So I decided to have a bit of a sword fight with him, which usually goes pretty well for me (plus I can't die or get permanently stuck so why not?). Unfortunately I got to witness Ozzie's unstoppable technique first hand: he's from Australia so no one here knows what the hell his insults mean, never mind how to counter them. "I've seen better mugs on a bush pig!" "Don't come the raw prawn with me!" What?

Well losing a sword fight didn't get me any closer to catching the thief, but it did give me a better idea of what's going on in this town.

I've found a blind shopkeeper who can recognise people by smell, and I've got a handkerchief dropped by the thief so I figured he could give me some information on him. Unfortunately he's got a cold, so I came over to this perfume expert to see if he (or his table of scents) could help me mix up a stronger version of the thief's stench. He could not. And now I am thoroughly stuck.

Alright I give up, I'm going to check a guide to see what I'm supposed to do.

Oh, I was supposed to 'use' the hankerchief several times, as Guybrush identifies a different part of the scent each time. Never would've guessed that. Giving the reconstructed scent to the shopkeeper got me a name (Pastrami A. Whappernapper), but it turns out that his filing monkey has ran off and he was the only one who knew how to use the shop's File-o-Matic system.

But that's fine, I can figure this out myself.

There are five symbols, Rabbit, Pumpkin, Palm Tree, Banana and Monkey, and it seems like the three reels correspond to the three initials of the name I'm looking up. So I just have to try enough combinations to reveal the pattern, then put in the code to bring up the file for "P A W".

Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit is A A A. Good, that makes sense.

Rabbit Rabbit Palm is B D F. Uh... so changing one dial can make a big change to the other two?

Palm Rabbit Rabbit is H D B. Aha, it flipped the answer around, though 'Palm' is now H instead of F.

Monkey Monkey Rabbit is S P C. Man, 'Rabbit' can give you all kinds of letters can't it?

Okay this is a bloody awkward puzzle. And I have to wait for the new file to slide out of the machine to see the name I've dialled every bloody time! Oh well, only 121 more combinations and I'll have found it by process of elimination instead.

EIGHT MORE COMBINATIONS LATER

I gave up and looked up the answer again. I won't spoil it, but it actually made a lot of sense and made me feel like an idiot..

Now I've got the map for the Marshe, which is just like the dance steps in Monkey Island 1, except there are times next to them. Well I have the walkthrough open still so I suppose I could just take a glance...

It's starting to become really obvious that when I beat the game the first time around I must have used a guide, because I'm failing at nearly every puzzle it puts in front of me. I beat Thimbleweed Park (easy mode) without a guide a few months ago, I'm not that bad at adventure games, but I'm really struggling here.

Maybe it really does have challenging puzzles, or maybe this wide open town with its shops full of stuff has got me too overwhelmed and demoralised to try too hard. There are so many walking sticks, buckets of rotting fish and life preservers around and I don't know what's going to be important! It wouldn't be so bad if I had a mouse cursor to click them with.

LATER

But I couldn't stop playing until I used the map to reach the funniest and cruelest puzzle in the game. Hang on, is that a cameo by The Head from long running kids show Art Attack?

The puzzle involves me getting all kinds of incredibly useful items from my future self, and then giving them right back to my past self without ever getting to use them. It's funny because my suffering is hilarious.

Anyway I continued to the end of the marsh, apprehended the thief with a duck (without checking the guide this time), and then dragged him all the way back to Inspector Canard. Somehow.

I'm still a long way from getting this voodoo anklet removed, but I promised that I'd stop playing after actually achieving something on the second island so I'm done!


CONCLUSION

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I was actually looking forward to playing Escape from Monkey Island again, and not just because it'd give me a chance to finally tell the world how utterly disgusted I am by Guybrush's belt buckle. Though I really do hate that belt buckle.

Giving a sequel to a new team means it's inevitably going to have a slightly different tone, but I think most people agree that Curse of Monkey Island worked out. It was more cartoony than the Ron Gilbert/Dave Grossman/Tim Schafer games, but it was also plenty dark and moody when it wanted to be, and it brought the characters to life with its excellent voice acting. But changing the crew for the third time when Escape came around didn't work out so well I reckon, as the Monkey Island magic was somehow jettisoned along the way.

The game tells a satirical tale about a developer taking over property, removing the authentic piraty personality and charm, and replacing it with a soulless facsimile, which is ironic because that's what it feels like has happened to this game. The place already looks like a theme park from the start. More so even than the first three games, which were literally based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and featured an actual theme park. Even before you get to the Planet Threepwood and Starbuccaneers the game feels like its strayed too far from that tiny bit of authenticity that made the earlier games feel like a pirate adventure with anachronisms instead of an alternate universe cartoon fantasy (except for when they went deliberately weird). In fact I should've really guessed the Sam and Max: Hit the Road designers were behind it, as even though it doesn't feature tourist traps, bigfoots and convenience store chains exactly, it comes close enough, and they did include another rich asshole in a big mansion as a villain.

Plus Guybrush and Elaine just don't feel right to me. I like a character to evolve during a story, but this new henpecked Guybrush feels like he's regressed. Elaine's his wife now, but she treats him like a beloved child that she tolerates unconditionally despite his tendency to ramble on weird tangents, and he acts the part. Curse Guybrush came across as being more cynical, assertive, and a bit more done with all the bullshit he keeps having to deal with. Though I suppose a lot of that was down to the expressive 2D animation. They weren't quite as sophisticated with their 3D animation back in 2000.

It's a shame that everything in the late 90s had to have 3D polygon graphics, even more than today, as this does feel like a downgrade to me. I loved the visuals of the first two games from the start and I learned to really appreciate the third, but this has entirely failed to grow on me over the years. Somehow they found a way to combine 'bland' with 'over-exaggerated' to create a look that lacks both the atmosphere and creepiness of the first two games and the style of Curse (curly clouds aside). They've also reimagined the original locations and retconned the stories to add bonus annoyances that only the fans will get! Well okay the pre-rendered backgrounds can actually look quite good at times, prettier than the character models, but I think the concept art generally looks better than the end result.

Another problem with the move to 3D is the controls, as the game's inherited a lot of Grim Fandango's awkwardness by running on the same engine. Grim's noir setting suits the Resident Evil-style cinematic camera angles, but Escape doesn't really call for it, and the way it likes to surprise players by suddenly jumping to a different view is a pain in the ass. Especially if up is now down, and Guybrush is suddenly facing the wrong way and walking back to the other screen again. I kind of got used to it, especially after I switched to a controller, but it's still not good!

I don't know if Grim Fandango was designed with consoles in mind, or if Tim Shafer just liked playing Tomb Raider a lot, but Escape works equally well on the PlayStation 2. It's got slightly higher poly models as well, plus it apparently helps make the most annoying part of the game a little less annoying, by making it possible to win Monkey Kombat at the end without making pages of notes. And you can look at the concept art in the bonus features! The downside of the PS2 version is that it pauses to load occasionally, and it you're stuck saving to the same save slot once you've started a game. On the PC you get 160 slots to play with, which is convenient if you're writing about the game for the internet and need to jump back to old puzzles to check stuff.

While I'm saying nice things to the game, I should probably mention that the voice acting and music is great like always. Escape has has a lot of the same composers as the earlier games, though they've been remixed, with Clint Bajakian moving up to replace Michael Land as the lead composer. They compensated for this by adding an additional Michael Land (called Michael Lande with an 'e'). This probably explains why Escape has a new heroic swashbuckling theme all of its own that shows up occasionally (mostly in the options menu).

It's been so long now that I'm not sure what I thought about the game the first time I played it, but I bet I didn't laugh a lot at it. The new writers have brought a different sense of humour that doesn't entirely click with me and the returning jokes get ran into the ground mercilessly. I'm sure I couldn't have hated it though, or else I wouldn't have spent the 10 hours getting it finished. And I can't really complain much about it featuring the occasional bastard of a puzzle without making the same complaint about every game in the series. But I would say it's easily my least favourite of the Monkey Islands, as it makes the critical error of being less appealing than some of the most iconic and well-loved adventure games ever made.

Still, it's much better than Curse of Enchantia, Dark Seed and all the other adventure games down at the bottom of the barrel, so I suppose it should have a Not Crap star:


That's not a recommendation exactly, but I will tell you that after almost two decades of stubborn offlineness, the game can now be bought and downloaded from GOG and Steam. And if it doesn't work for you, you can always try ResidualVM.

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Thanks for reading! I won't torment you with a image of the next game because it'll be ages (two months) until you get to read about it, but hey you can take a guess at what it will be anyway if you want.

You can also leave a comment expressing your own personal opinions about Escape from Monkey Island, or just to say hi and let me know you dropped by.