A fantastic surprise to someone new to the Monkey Island series.

User Rating: 9 | Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal PC
I've never played a Monkey Island game up until this point, which disappoints me now, considering how much I loved Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1. It's great- really, really great. The story is amazing, and the characters really breath life into the video game. They share amusing stories, talk of current affairs, discuss how much they want your enchanted hand. You really are brought into the game, and it plays like a movie almost. If you've ever played Professor Layton, the story setup is similar- you push the plot forward by playing the game as well as watching cut scenes.

The gameplay- basically, it's a puzzle/point and click game- which is fine. The puzzles range from easy to medium difficulty (there was one hard one) but they aren't completely obvious at first, you really have to work on each one in order to complete the game- takes a lot of logical thinking to combine two completely random items in order to make a quest item.

The graphics are not amazing- but they don't need to be. There's enough detail in the game that makes up for it. Each location was drawn by artists, meaning you won't see the same tree, or background more than 2 or 3 times.

The sound is very good as well, it really adds to the theme and there is great pirate music (lol). The voice acting is the best- each character has a unique voice and most even have different accents, adding a lot of variety. TellTale did excellent in this section.

Lastly, the replayability- Not much really, once you have seen the story and played through there's not much to go back too. You can continue to explore the island, which is a lot of fun, but you'll probably finish within an hour into the game anyhow.

***Warning*** DO NOT USE A WALKTHROUGH- that ruins the entire point of the game, you can figure out all the puzzles without one, you just have to chip away at it. It may get frustrating, but believe me when I say, it's a bad, bad idea.

Thanks for reading.