Roderick

Tales of Monkey Island

Recommended Posts

Oop!

(Aren't you all)

Ack!

(forgetting about)

Chee!

(the giant robot?)

Probably! I remember feeling upset over Herman Toothrot's history being changed... I remember being frustrated with Monkey Kombat... but after that it's all a blur...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
The attempt to tie everything together was really crappy in MI4, I felt like they were retroactively explaining things in the previous games that really didn't need explanations. Guybrush was for the first time ever a complete loser who was snubbed by everyone and the focus of everyone's derision, not someone actually on top of things who was just not believed. The touristification of the Caribbean was a lot of fun in the previous games where the Caribbean was actually a rotten hive of scum and villainy and the touristy crap was actually funny. They made it too literally touristy and killed the joke. The giant power rangers robots being the secret of monkey island, Le Chuck changing shape randomly, etc. All really weak and not well-executed plot elements.

I played the game only once, when it came out. I tried to play it again recently and couldn't get past the opening prologue bit. I was ready to give it another chance, but the little exasperated monkey facepalming to Guybrush's not understanding what was going on was just representative of what sucked about the game.

I think you've just summed up a lot of the game's faults perfectly... You even had the same experience as me to the point where I tried to play it again only to get bored/frustrated/irritated at the beginning and gave up.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think MI4 was particularly bad, but it wasn't as good as the previous Monkey Island games. Since the first two, and even the third to some extent, were so beloved, it had a lot to live up to. And since it played a little loose with the Monkey Island legend (Herman Toothroot=Gov. Marley, monkey statue turning into giant robot), it probably didn't endear itself to the hardcore MI fans as evidenced by some of the sharper replies here.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What was the explanation for LeChuck being able to change form at will? I can't actually remember, and I think it kind of took away from the coolness of LeChuck permanently being in a changed form in the prior three games thanks to Guybrush.

I guess it could just be explained away as voodoo if nothing else.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
What was the explanation for LeChuck being able to change form at will? I can't actually remember, and I think it kind of took away from the coolness of LeChuck permanently being in a changed form in the prior three games thanks to Guybrush.

Well, he pretends to be that dude in the first one by shapeshifting, doesn't he? Then in the second, he (arguably)

makes Guybrush see him as his brother

. Then in the third one, not really anything although it does feel a little like he chooses his firey appearance - it doesn't really follow on logically from his ship getting sunk by a voodoo cannonball...

I think LeChuck being able to change at will was pretty much the smallest departure from the previous games!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

EMI was a nice/good game that would have probably been received a lot better had it not been the sequel to three other MI games.

There's a lot of problems with EMI but the main one is this: while the first three games were comedies, they were also cool little pirate adventure stories. Ghost pirates, mysterious islands, treasure, curses, that sort of thing.

EMI instead is mostly about other things: corporations, tourism, marriage jokes, gubernatorial elections, pop culture references, giant robots (wtf?), etc. And it's also a lot about parodying Monkey Island itself. As I remember many scenes in EMI were just screaming "MONKEY ISLAND AMIRITE?!?".

So instead of a humorously told piratey story with some fun character dynamics it kind of turned into ... I don't know what it turned into.

I think when people say EMI doesn't have the same "charm" or whatever, it's half related to the art direction, and half related to what I just wrote.

Basically, I could have just said that I agree with Kingzjester. :shifty:

Edited by Marek

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Good point about Fester bbX1138, although he was a ghost back then. After Guybrush blew him apart it was his resurrected rotten body we were dealing with, and then after that the voodoo cannonball turned him into the fire demon thing.

I may be wrong, but didn't he lack any kind of inherent voodoo powers while in his zombie form, and needed to use shit like voodoo dolls just like the voodoo lady? He was just a reanimated corpse, after all. It was the voodoo cannonball that gave him insane voodoo powers again, which I guess is when he regained his ability to shape shift (he turns into pure fire at one point in CMI).

I dunno, it doesn't really bother me. I've never really thought about the technicalities of LeChuck's transformations before though so it's kind of fun. :D

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
What was the explanation for LeChuck being able to change form at will? I can't actually remember, and I think it kind of took away from the coolness of LeChuck permanently being in a changed form in the prior three games thanks to Guybrush.

I guess it could just be explained away as voodoo if nothing else.

Sheriff Fester Shinetop?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

One other I just thought of that I don't see listed above is the direct control that MI4 used instead of point and click. If I'm not mistaken, this was the same engine as Grim Fandango's which seems to be maybe the only critique people make of that game. This might be a critique for the Adventure Gamers forums though.

On a similar note, I remember a lot of critiques about the 3D environment too. I personally thought they did a very good job with that, but the 2D proponents probably weren't happy with the change at this point in the series.

Marek reminded me about the plot which did have a lot of veiled critiques about corporate culture. Maybe that's out of place in a Monkey Island game, but it did remind me of Sam and Max Hit the Road where similar commentaries are found throughout the game. I guess this shouldn't be surprising since the main designers (Stemmle and Clark, right?) were the same for both games. But it seemed to work better in S&M than MI4 for whatever reason.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Marek reminded me about the plot which did have a lot of veiled critiques about corporate culture. Maybe that's out of place in a Monkey Island game, but it did remind me of Sam and Max Hit the Road where similar commentaries are found throughout the game. I guess this shouldn't be surprising since the main designers (Stemmle and Clark, right?) were the same for both games. But it seemed to work better in S&M than MI4 for whatever reason.

The original had many anachronistic jokes about corporate culture and the US Way Of Life in general, (International House of Mojo, the little ™s all over the place, Stan, the Grog machine, I found the treasure of Mêlée Island and all I got was this lousy t-shirt, etc.) but because the rest of the Caribbean was disgusting and decrepit and lawless, these jokes were funny. In EMI they decided to go away with the punchline by making the settings literally quaint and touristy as opposed to just aspiring to be in some official narrative, but failing to follow through.

And while LeChuck did allegedly shapeshift between Lester Shinetop and his ghostly form, he did that as a ghost, and never when he was a zombie or as the flamin' demon or whatever. In the forth one he reappears and all of a sudden he can shapeshift between all his old bodies, for punctuation... Honestly, though, I don't want to engage into pedantic explanation as to how, if we look carefully in SOMI and MI2 he does indeed change his form and blah blah blah. I can't help but see the shapeshifting as anything other than the creative team's failure at coming up with an interesting fourth form for LeChuck, that they resolved by just cramming all the other ones in.

I don't know what kind of amazing and awesome ideas they had for the game that fell through because of budgetary concerns and pressure from on top, I bet they are all a really competent and capable bunch. Unfortunately they really botched EMI on many fronts and I am a bit freaked out by the fact that I am still bitter, ten years on, a high school diploma and a college degree later. I really tried to play it again a few months ago and couldn't get past the intro. I AM SORRY.

I realize that some (most?) of the EMI team are at Telltale now. I enjoyed both seasons of Sam & Max and the Wallace and Gromit games and I have what I believe to be reasonably, realistically high hopes for the Tales of Monkey Island.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Here's a potential explanation for a hypothetical EMI LeChuck that I would suggest if they asked me today:

HE IS AN EVIL GOLEM-LIKE MONSTROSITY MADE FROM THE CLAYS OF MONKEY/DINKY ISLAND. When he was trapped under the carnival of the damned, his evil demon essence seeped into the island itself, and made a new body from the very mud.

I am not proud of this rabid, futile exercise; I just felt the above tirade needed an example. :getmecoat

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Something I've noticed while replaying EMI for a Mojo article is that it's simultaneously an example of the best and worst humor in the entire series. It's very scattershot - the jokes are either hilarious or they fall flat on their face. It might actually have some of the sharpest writing, but what it lacks is the consistency of the other games. I do agree that the comedy being a little less "charm" and a little more crass and rude like Sam & Max makes it stand out. I think as is always the case when you go for the Being Random route, the results are mixed. Guybrush saying "And another thing, I think that the staple gun was completely uncalled for" after a black screen accompanied by weird noises is funny; belabored honeymoon jokes aren't.

And yet, despite the juvenile stuff, some of the pop culture and literary nods are pretty extreme. I know Monkey Island games are no strangers to such things, but geeze. Tipping the hat to Iron Maiden, Close Encounters, 2001, etc. etc. is one thing, but EMI is as liberal with references to Peter Carey novels and Percy Bysshe Shelley sonnets as it is with any fart jokes.

Also, random exchange from the game that made me laugh when I ran into it earlier, mostly thanks to Dom's delivery of "three times":

Guybrush: Mister Charles is really LeChuck! You know, the ghastly zombie ghost pirate?

Harbor Mistress: I'm really getting tired of all this negative campaigning. LeChuck is dead. Mr. Charles has a solid record as a normal human being. Besides, weren't you the one who killed LeChuck?

Guybrush: Well, yeah... three times, but...

Harbor Mistress: See? Lies and distortions.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Every time you guys type "MI" I read it as "Mission Impossible".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've played about an hour or so into MI4 now and I was pretty much going to say what Udvarnoky just said. Basically this would have been a brilliant Sam and Max game.

Going into a bit more detail regarding the humour being hit and miss: I'll often come across a line where something funny is subtly implied and will make me laugh only to find that this was the set up and the a moment later punch line spells it all out for you. This happens alot and it kills the joke, it's like the game is constantly screaming in your ear DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU GET THE JOKE? WE MADE A JOKE, DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU GET IT YET? HOW ABOUT NOW, HAVE YOU GOT IT NOW? which I find really insulting and annoying. Other times though there'll be a subtle joke that's left on it's own and I genuinely find it amusing, it is very hit and miss.

Every time you guys type "MI" I read it as "Mission Impossible".

I get the reverse of that. Whenever people write MI for Mission Impossible my brain fills in Monkey Island.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So Mike Stemmle is a writer/designer on this game, and that does concern me. I don't know if it was more him or Sean Clark who mostly failed to understand what Monkey Island "should" be about, but I'm hoping he kept up with fan response over the years and learned from his mistakes. Really I just get the feeling that when those two guys designed EMI, they apparently did not thoroughly play through the first three games, as shown by all the small but weird plotholes like JoJo Jr., LeChuck changing shapes for absolutely no reason, and the Herman Toothrot story. Also their inability to pick what rating they wanted for the game was really obnoxious. More than anything I'm bothered by people saying "darned demons from heck" on one part of the game and later saying "damned demons from hell" on another part. All of the Monkey Islands previously got away with the words "damn" and "hell" being used appropriately, so what caused them to skirt around that and then forget about it? Was LucasArts rushing everyone or did everyone just want the game done and over with?

I'm not so bothered by the gentrification story and giant robot monkey. Some good puzzles, points and jokes came out of it. Maybe it didn't exactly fit in with Monkey Island, as the world was definitely much more ruthless in the earlier games as Kingzjester said, but I thought it was neat that the real pirates were being pushed out or sent to rehab because they didn't fit in with the new commercialized society. It wasn't exactly a Sam and Max story, because while Sam and Max comics make fun of tons of materialism and consumer society, it's not like Sam or Max want to do anything about it or really care either way. They indulge in it cynically for the most part. I wasn't really expecting a throwback to LeChuck's revenge after CMI, so I guess the overall story and puzzles were the most enjoyable things about the game to me. I think the major problem that clouds the overall story from being more enjoyable to most others is as Udvarnoky said: more than half the jokes fall flat. Breaking the fourth wall for the umpteenth time for a cheap laugh is just so incredibly tiring. Almost every character and description seemed like it was loaded with one liners. I hate most comedy movies because they all seem to think the best way to make a comedy is with nonstop jokes and EMI went for that, intentionally or not.

Also the graphics were shit, except for some of the backgrounds. The level of incompetence in the 3d modeling and texturing of the characters in that game is just ridiculous. Did no one understand that they could render hi-res textures for cutscenes, even if they did not want to smooth the character models for consistency reasons? Seriously, do I need to see the huge ass JPEG pixels on Guybrushs blocky hair swirl even in cut scenes? Why is there a long cutscene with Pegnose Pete in jail where he is shown close up multiple times that reveals his missing nose is like 5 blocky brownish pixels? Why are the polygons in everyone's stubby 3d hands overlapping and breaking without shame over and over? How did no one catch any of that and rerender with at least a mesh smooth on really ugly stuff or resaving textures before the game was shipped? Grim Fandango had none of those mistakes, and if I'm not mistaken, polygon count and texture resolution was upped for nearly every cutscene in that game. I can confirm that the characters in Grim Fandango cutscenes definitely had different hand models than the ingame ones.

Anyways, ranting aside, I'm sure Tales of Monkey Island will have much better quality control, although I'm seeing some problems with boring 3D objects in the trailer, most notably the rope Elaine was inside. I'm guessing they'll fix that as they go along.

But as for Stemmle, Dave Grossman is the design director, which should keep wacky inconsistancies in check and mean top notch puzzling, as Grossman games seem to all have (kids ones included). And Jake works there and gets more and more design credits now, so I bet he would be good at pointing out any continuity errors.

Now all they have to do is eventually shift the tone and atmosphere of Tales of Monkey Island closer to LeChuck's Revenge and I will be in heaven.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
There's a lot of problems with EMI but the main one is this: while the first three games were comedies, they were also cool little pirate adventure stories. Ghost pirates, mysterious islands, treasure, curses, that sort of thing.

EMI instead is mostly about other things: corporations, tourism, marriage jokes, gubernatorial elections, pop culture references, giant robots (wtf?), etc.

I actually have similar feelings towards Sam and Max: Season One (I have only played one and a half episodes of the second) with its hypnotism theme and annoying characters that just kept reappearing. This probably sounds incredibly stupid, but to me Sam and Max has always been about Sam and Max and American popular culture. Season One just didn't feel right because other things stole the show too much.

That said, I'm pretty confident that I will enjoy Tales of Monkey Island more. At least the zombie virus theme is quite piratey (by some logic). It has been a while since I have played Monkey Island 4, but I remember enjoying it quite a bit as well, although not as much as the other Monkey Island games. I felt that they went a bit too far with the tourist stuff as well, though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This could just be an apologist's words, but I'm less inclined to hold my problems with EMI against the team so much as the environment I imagine it was built in. Even as long ago as 2000 LEC had pretty much stopped making adventure games, and most of their adventure game talent had left. I suspect that LEC management requested a fourth Monkey Island with the mandate of a small budget and a tight schedule, and the remaining adventure folks over at the company jumped desperately at the chance because MI4 was something they were passionate about doing, at least relative to painting textures for the next pod racer game. EMI definitely gives off the feel of a really well-executed rushed game to me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
This could just be an apologist's words, but I'm less inclined to hold my problems with EMI against the team so much as the environment I imagine it was built in. Even as long ago as 2000 LEC had pretty much stopped making adventure games, and most of their adventure game talent had left. I suspect that LEC management requested a fourth Monkey Island with the mandate of a small budget and a tight schedule, and the remaining adventure folks over at the company jumped desperately at the chance because MI4 was something they were passionate about doing, at least relative to painting textures for the next pod racer game. EMI definitely gives off the feel of a really well-executed rushed game to me.

I think that's a very good point and I wouldn't be surprised if it was true!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Here's something to think about: maybe, just maybe people get better after 10 years of experience.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now