Escape From Monkey Island is a newcomer’s nightmare and a veteran’s nostalgia-soaked dream.
Our budding hero Guybrush Threepwood and his darling governor, Elaine Marley, are just coming back from their three-month honeymoon at sea. Things are looking up for the duo; they’re in love, and have a lifetime of ruling the peaceful Mêlée Island ahead of them. At least, that’s what they expected. Soon after arriving back home, though, they discover that Elaine has been declared dead and is no longer governor. To make matters worse, an election is looming and the sole candidate, the mysterious Charles L. Charles, seems poised to take over the island. An ill-tempered Aussie land developer by the name of Ozzie Mandrill is exacerbating things further by trying to commercialize the island with trendy businesses like Starbuccaneers and Planet Threepwood. To top it all off, an ancient relic known as the Ultimate Insult - said to be ten times as powerful as Big Whoop from the second game – threatens the islands.
Monkey Island games have always been great at creating chaos and then condensing it down to a satisfying plotline, and the same is true of this game. Many of the situations you’ll find yourself in – such as when Guybrush must use a version of himself earlier in history to help him in the trippy Mists O’ Tyme – are totally off-the-wall and are very entertaining.
However, Escape From Monkey Island enjoys being a Monkey Island game a little too much. From beginning to end, the game’s script is overflowing with nods and references to past games. In fact, many locations and characters are only made funny in context to previous games. Seeing Carla and Otis try and talk their way out of knowing Guybrush in the game’s opening section is only amusing if you’ve played the previous games and know who they are already. And Murray the Talking Skull, hilarious as always, speaks almost entirely in references to the previous game, The Curse of Monkey Island. So while veterans have a whole bunch of cameos and in-jokes to look forward to (with Pegnose Pete, LeChuck, Meathook, and many, many more), the fact that Escape From Monkey Island gets by with so little new material is eventually disappointing. You’ll rekindle a lot of old memories playing this game, but you won’t make many new ones.
That’s not to say there’s nothing new or exciting about this game, because there is. New characters like the cliff-diver Marco de Pollo are great, well-drawn members of the game’s world that deliver lots of memorable lines. The game’s puzzles are also quite good, such as the previously mentioned Mists o’ Tyme conundrum and some equally bizarre situations involving prosthetic limbs, sea sponges, accordians, and the famous rubber chicken on a pulley from the very first Monkey Island game. The puzzles are always silly but are usually rooted in the exaggerated world of the game, and are often quite clever. Insult Swordfighting and Arm Wrestling; where the physical nature of those two sports is ultimately won by trading verbal barbs at your opponent, are alive and well here as well.
However, a fair number of puzzles, like the one that involves Starbuccaneers in the game’s second act, are overly long and plodding. Others still require insane leaps of logic that will leave you bewildered as to how the designers ever thought the puzzle would make sense. And although the game gives you plenty of hints during puzzles, it will never give you the solution, making some sections of the game potentially maddening. Especially Monkey Kombat.
Monkey Kombat makes up the majority of the game’s third act and is meant to be a reference to the gory Mortal Kombat fighting games. It’s a funny premise that pits Guybrush against monkeys in a battle of stances. There are five different stances to go into, and each one defeats two others, sort of like a more complicated version of rock-paper-scissors. You switch between stances by using a sequence of monkey noises. Problem is, the game doesn’t fill you in on any of the stances or how to change between them. The end result is a frustrating hour of trial and error as you attempt to figure out the inner workings of Monkey Kombat and take notes. Whereas the rest of the game has a deliberate, consistent pace, this section brings things to a screeching halt, just before the game’s final scenes take place.
But despite the game’s shortcomings, the sheer density and quantity of the game’s comedy and puzzles means that eventually you’ll need to take Escape From Monkey Island as a whole, and the big picture is a positive one. It’s a rather lengthy adventure full of absurdist humor and peppered with countless references to past Monkey Island games. It also has a fitting presentation, with a sweeping score, superb voice talent (especially Dominic Armato as Guybrush), and dreamy, colorful visuals (although the character models can look a little chunky at times, and the game appears a touch washed out on the PS2). With so much self-referential material, Escape From Monkey Island is a newcomer’s nightmare and a veteran’s nostalgia-soaked dream, and comes recommended to the latter.