It’s some time in the early 1990s. A small boy, probably aged 8 or so, is sitting in his bedroom, with a copy of a new game in his hands. He tears open the box and, with wonder in his eyes, inserts the first floppy disk into his Atari STE with a satisfying “clunk” and hits the power switch. He has no idea of the adventure that’s about to unfold over the coming months, only that the game has the word “Monkey” in the title, and he likes monkeys, so it must be good.

The young boy is me, a long, long time ago. The game is the original The Secret of Monkey Island.

It’s fair to say that I’m a bit of a Monkey Island fan – in fact, I’m a lot of a Monkey Island fan. I’ve played through and completed all of the games in the series, enjoyed them immensely, and even wasn’t too irritated by the whole keyboard control thing in Monkey Island 4. I can remember all the swordfighting insults, even over 15 years later, and have partaken in a spitting contest, a high diving championship, and even endured the silliness of “Monkey Kombat” in the meantime.

But anyway, enough about me. It’s nearly a whole decade since the last game in the Monkey Island universe, and Telltale Games, a company founded by ex-LucasArts employees (with LucasArts’ blessing), has decided to bring the series kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. This means that, this time around, our hero Guybrush Threepwood gets to romp around in true 3D environments and we get the game as episodic content, but pretty much everything else you know and love about the classic formula remains the same.

In the opening scene (video here) we’re on a pirate ship doing battle with Monkey Island‘s chief antagonist, the demon ghost pirate LeChuck. Guybrush’s long-suffering wife, Elaine, has been captured by hellish voodoo-cursed pirate and Guybrush needs to find a way to free her from his evil clutches. This small section before the opening credits acts as a tutorial and gives the player a feel for the “new” point-and-click control scheme. That’s right – no silly keyboardness here unless you want to, we get the option of a good old-fashioned mouse-based interface, and it works beautifully throughout.

After the boat scene and an opening cinematic, Guybrush finds himself washed up on the shores of Flotsam Island. He soon learns that, in a nod to previous games in the series, he needs to procure a ship to get off of the island. The first part of the challenge consists of staging some piratical antics for a local reporter. I don’t want to say too much more about the plot as discovering and exploring the story is such an important part of the game, but I will say that this is classic Monkey Island down to a T.

What I can say, however, is that Flotsam Island’s various 3D-rendered areas look slick and detailed, moving around is easy and intuitive, and the characters are charming and engaging in exactly the way that an adventure game should be. The dialogue is witty and full of in-jokes and subtle pop culture references, and is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny in a lot of places. Stalwart Monkey Island fans will be glad to hear that, as with previous outings, all the series’ favourite characters make a return, including the enigmatic Voodoo Lady, and she’s just as funny and peculiar as ever.

And so it is that I find myself at the part of the review where I have to reward the game a score out of ten. I wanted to try to find something not to like about this game – I wanted the new control scheme to be painful to use, the story to make no sense, the soundtrack to feature My Chemical Romance – anything negative at all to use as evidence that the franchise has jumped the proverbial shark.

…But it hasn’t in the slightest.

This is, in fact, the best new game I have played in a very long time. At around 6 hours the game is on the short side, but considering that this is only the first part in a 5-part series that’s hardly a valid criticism, especially looking at the price. So I find myself doing the only thing I can do in this situation: awarding this game the holy grail of review scores. Let’s make those teabags gold too, just because.

A well-deserved 10/10. Bring on Episode 2!

(Review is of the PC version of the game, Wii release is expected later this year.)

Other TTB Posts Like This One

• Review: Tales of Monkey Island Ep3: Lair Of The Leviathan (PC)
• Review: Tales of Monkey Island Ep4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood (PC)
• Review: So Blonde (PC)
• Tales of Monkey Island Episode 3 Coming September 29th
• Review: Tales of Monkey Island Ep2: The Siege Of Spinner Cay (PC)