Customer Reviews

Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 1 [Download]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Great game, but this review is really to give a tip for folks with slow games. I have a relatively new laptop (Feb 09) with a DuoCore2 6400@ 2.00 ghz and was having the slow problems. The ship intro was nearly (or nigh, for you pirates) making me literally sea-sick because of the delayed motion. I fixed the problem by going into game settings and lowering both the quality of picture and the resolution (don't know if both are necessary). After I did that, the game moved at normal pace and was fun to play. If you don't already have a top of the line video card, I doubt that you are the type that will care about the difference in the visuals. As far as the game itself, it comes complete with the monkey-heavy mayhem and cute (and/or frustrating) puzzles. My only complaint is that it was relatively short, but I appreciate that this is just a "chapter" of the whole game. I still think it could have used at least one or two more puzzles. And more PIRATES and GROG. Argghh, matey!

I used to play all the Monkey Island games as a little girl, and was desperate fot it to be continued ! Then, when I learnt "Tales of Monkay Island" was coming, I must say I was not that excited about it : what if they spoilt my beloved childhood (early teens) game ?

Being curious enough, though, I decided to buy it and was not disappointed. Even though the Curse of Monkey Island remains my favourite for the fantabulous drawings, this new one is as exciting as the previous ones (much more exciting than MI4, actually, which I didn't like that much). Monkey humor is definitely back, and, resolving the puzzles, I got back to that same feeling I had when I was younger. It's also pretty good concerning the amount of stuff to do (I was afraid this episodes thing would lead to making you get two items to put them together and that's it, chapter is over) : you need to think it over, you need a little luck too, maybe, you need to have the impression of being stuck before finding a solution, and that's why you enjoy finding it after all. I'm waiting for the next chapters, of course, but the first one was a really good experience. If you liked Monkey Island, I see no reason why you shouldn't enjoy this one.

Now, technically, it probably comes from my computer but the game can be very slow sometimes, so I suppose you need a good configuration to support it(probably better than mine, but my PC is a tad old, that's probably why). Plus, 3D is not the best choice in my opinion (Look at the effects it has on poor Elaine), yet, for the ones who compare it with MI4, try to play MI4 again and then go back to Tales of, I swear you'll see a huge difference.). So, 3D is what it is, anyway.

Ok, so, I guess that's it for the review. Really, up to now, it's a great game. If what you're looking for is perfect pictures, beautiful landscapes and realisme, don't buy it. But if you're looking for good humor and excellent puzzles, please don't hesitate one more second.

I too played the origial Monkey Island series and loved the PG13+ humor of the game. (ToMI) Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 1 brings the old characters back to life with the same "feel" as the original game. The cartoonish graphics are fitting for the genre and the acting is superb. There is some issues with the background "noise" during some dialog scenes, but overall the mixture is good. There is some issues with puzzle solving; visual clues are had to follow on somescreens as well as the audio clues caused some confusion as well. The main functional issue concerns with controlling Threepwood, using the keyboard worked the best for me.
In the end, ToMI was very entertaining game to play!

NOTE: Runs on Win7 Home just fine.

I too, like nother reviewer, really enjoyed the first two MI games, esp. as an alternative to the 2x/year "Leisure Suit Larry" which like this series, got more "harder and way far from logical 'problem solving' w/a lot of walking around" and kept losing or recycling the humor. I liked them both because of the exact mix of "adventure" and most of all, *humor*, with lots of recurring "inside jokes" or things that would come back later as funny.

These were written at the time with mostly cultural refs and geek humor put in a "pirate" context - no, the graphics weren't great but the story and most the *humor* really made for great games. In MI3 ("Curse") when they went to 2D cartoon format, at first I disliked it but grew to think it was perfect for the type of game. The move to 3D in MI4 and now this doesn't add anything except making a lot more walking around that much more difficult. Whereas with "Curse", my then fiancee' started bugging me about how much time I spending playing it - so I got her to join me and although that took a couple of days she was hooked to to the end, because the puzzles were interesting & smart, and there was *tons* of good jokes and humor.

MI4 was just too hard to navigate and was all puzzles, little humor aside from refs to previous games. Anyway, I just finished MI5 EP1 and it's pretty bad - most of jokes are awful (although there are a few laffers) - what there are of the bulk are referring to past games; the interface is better than MI4 but I much prefer the 2CD "cartoon" style of the MI3 "SCUMM" engine which suits this game's theme perfectly.

I found the puzzles to be only of two extreme opposites: stupidly easy or very, extremely, find a "walkthu" hard. Terrible balance of game play, a complete lack of *successful* humor, and as said, dumb-easy puzzles or "why would I ever try this?" type of impossible puzzles that only super gamer dork
s or insiders get. Very disappointing overall, but the better than MI4 ("Escape") BTW, Guybrush always looked dorky funny but looks like a douche in this game. I'm sure I'll play them all but I wish they'd make Vista/7 version of "Grim Fandango". Yeah, only $9 each but 5 "chapters" and there's your $45 game. Unless you've a Monkey Island fanatic like myself, really, skip this and replay the first three if you can - they pack 1000x more humor in them. Honest.

I just wish companies would realize the huge market for playing old games for nostalgia or just because they were great, as the only work would be converting the code - the art, the stories, etc. are already done. Could be a huge cash cow. Oh well. Better than a lot of "too serious" adventure games out there at least.

As noted by other reviewers, it is sloooooowwwwwww - slow to load, slow graphics, slow pointer, and the dialogue and characters' mouths are so out of sync that it's like watching a dubbed-over Japanese movie - but what's worse, I was only able to play the "intro" section: the software locked up immediately after the credits and I got the "Windows is searching for a solution to the problem..." box. No amount of playing with settings (game or operating system) helped. I contacted Amazon's customer service about the problem and they advised me tell my problems to Telltale Software. After downloading the most recent graphics driver for my system (82945G express chipset) the game did get past the intro, but only with the game settings at 800 x 600 resolution (just like VGA) and not in full screen, so the window was maybe 25% of the area of my monitor. The game was still impossibly slow to play - the animation would stop periodically as well as the sound effects and dialogue, and the action and sounds would get out of sync. Amazon WAS good enough to refund my money, as the game was not playable, so that at least was a positive experience.

That said, for the 5 minutes I was actually able to play the game, the writing seems as good as ever, if not better - I laughed out load several times at the dialogue. The puzzles in the intro section were too easy to solve compared to previous Monkey Island games, but I assume they get a little more challenging as the game progresses.

So even though the writing gets 4 out of 5 stars, overall the product gets one star due to the programming.

Ok, I am an old time monkey Island game fan. I have played them all, and I think this is the best one yet. I like the cartoon like cinematic style, voice acting is great, and the puzzles are (mostly) fair. We all gather round and play as a family. Great puzzle solving fun for parents and kids together.

The user interface isn't perfect. Dragging Guybrush around with the mouse can be a bit difficult(you can also use the arrow keys on the keyboard), and sometimes the camera angles can be a problem. Also the lip sync is terrible, which is a little distracting at first.

You can subscribe to all 5 episodes at once and get a break on the single episode price(I did). At this writing, only the first 2 episodes are available, with new ones scheduled monthly.

Ok, many people seemed to have technical difficulties - I played it both on my 2.8 Ghz dualcore laptop and my 2.83 GHZ quad-core desktop which have Win Vista Ultimate and Win7 respectively on max settings, and everything worked fine. Please don't give 1 star to a great game because you cannot figure out your hardware issues.

Now, to the game. Honestly, I didn't believe Telltale games were going to make it. Sure, they successfully resurrected Sam & Max, another darling of adventure gaming, but Monkey Island was always special, so I was skeptical until actually launching the game. As a man who played and replayed all four original games, I can safely say that this is as close as it gets today to the glory days of pirating in the shoes of Guybrush Threepwood. The developers have lovingly recreated the atmosphere and witty hilarity of the series. Sure, the interface and puzzles are simpler, but who cares when it is SO MUCH FUN!

In summary, this is both a bliss for a long-time fan and a great funny gaem for those who've never heard of Guybrush Threepwood before.

ARRRRRRR!

I have been playing adventure games for over 20 years and I've played all of the previous Monkey Island games. Once I figured out how to get past the various performance issues and adjusted to the somewhat bizarre cursor controls, I found this entire series of games to be engaging and humorous.

Pros
* Closely follows the successful formula of Monkey Island (e.g. tongue-and-cheek humor)
* Engaging, often original puzzles with (mostly) reasonable solutions
* Decent graphics
* Great characterizations and voices
* The developing plot held my interest

Cons
* It took some fiddling to make it playable (see below)
* Puzzles might be too easy for true aficionados
* A tad expensive - each chapter provided me with about 5 - 8 hours of playing time


At first, the game wouldn't even start on my computer. I saw the skull icon and then it crashed. This was rectified by resetting my graphics card to full 32-bit color; I must have reset it to 16-bit color for some reason or other.

Then, I carefully verified that my PC met all requirements, especially DirectX. The game was still unbearably slow, so I changed the graphics settings via NVidia software controller:

* In "Image Settings": so-called "quality" mode to so-called "performance" mode
* Resolution 1024x768
* Refresh 75hz
* Anti-aliasing OFF
* Hardware acceleration

After starting the game, I entered "Settings" and ensured that the resolution was set to 1024x768. Also, I slid the "quality" slider all the way down to 1.

One final pointer. The game always autosaves to position 1. Thus, the most recent save is often at position 1 rather than the highest number. Check date and time.

After making the aforementioned tweaks, I have been able to enjoy these games. I gave it four stars because I have really enjoyed this series. 5 stars is reserved for the great games (e.g. Longest Journey, Syberia and Myst).

You probably already know what this game is, but if not it's in short a puzzle game. There's no real "combat", mostly just following "clues" and putting objects together to try to solve puzzles.

First off, it runs well on Windows 7 64-bit systems. It had some weird graphical bugs on my ATI card, though restarting the game made them go away. I haven't tried it with a nVidia card yet. Graphics are good for what they try to be, cartoony and not overly realistic.

There's a lot of dialog and a lot of effort put into it. The worlds look nice and the world is small enough to generally be able to find things that you need. The puzzles were for the most part fun.

Some of the design seems a bit lazy. You go into the forest at one point and going back the same way you came seems to send you to a new location instead of where you were before. It's hard to explain, but was OK after I got used to it. The puzzles are bizarre at times and I still never figured out how you're supposed to know how to turn some of the dials. I mostly had to use luck and a little logic (though I'm positive not the way the developers intended) to trial and error my way through. I beat the game without a guide, but parts of it were highly tedious.

I was pretty shocked how short the game was. I was expecting to travel the entire island, but only ended up going to a handful of locations. The whole point is to stop some winds, get a boat, and sail off to the next game. After you get off the island, that's it. Go get the next chapter. Not that big a deal for me because I got the whole set on a 1 day sale, so all of them cost me less than half the price of one here, but if you're paying full price it's only a few hours of fun and really no replay value.

The second chapter is driving me nuts though. I may have to break down and try a guide. It seems more difficult in the randomness of how the puzzles need to be solved and more locations mean more load times while hunting around. Morgan is hot at least. ;)

I recommend this game to everyone who enjoys good comedy and fun with a bit of mystery. You need to play the games in order. I absolutely love this game!! I hope they make more like this.