Tales of Monkey Island: Rise of a Pirate God Review
After five long arduous months the struggles and troubles of Guybrush Threepwood (Mighty Pirate) come to an end with Episode Five – Rise of a Pirate God. The previous Tales have seen Guybrush battling pox pirates and partying inside a giant manatee, but this tale has the grandest backdrop yet, the pirate afterlife.
The pirate afterlife is a really compelling setting, from the off you’re greeted with some great gags; the grog vending machine that sells cherry grog, diet grog, grog XD and of course…grog; turnstiles, because even in death, life never loses it’s inconveniences. Telltale’s little details really help you become immersed in your surroundings, with the added humour of Threepwood of course. You find yourself at the crossroads of the pirate afterlife which leads to three separate areas – swordfight, thieves den and treasure hunt – each one with its own situations and characters.
The task set in front of you is to somehow get back into your body, stop LeChuck, save Elaine and possibly the whole world. Should be easy enough then. The first thing you have to do is find a way out of the afterlife, thankfully LeChuck has already proved this possible, so retracing his footsteps is the key. Through a means that I will not mention, you gain access to the world and get to meet up with some well-known places and faces from the previous tales. It’s nice to see the old familiar characters again and is a good way to tie the whole story together.
New characters also have their chance to shine and two really stand out – Caleb and the “friend” in the thieves den. Caleb, if that is his real name, is a strange little man who is there to give you advice and confuse you in equal measures. The nameless “friend” is someone I want to see more of, a sort-of-rasta pirate thief who loves to show off his impressive skills of thievery. Both these characters contain some great lines of dialogue and add some key refreshment to the gathering of returning characters. You also get a dog, although not as funny as the afore-mentioned characters, he is very handy in solving some cheeky puzzles.
Solving some of the problems in the later half of the game was great fun, switching between situations and combining items are something that TellTale and Monkey Island do very well. I wish I could tell you all the hilarious details but it would ruin it for you. Safe to say, I chuckled, you’ll chuckle, we’ll all chuckle. Especially with the…no, I can’t tell you. Only one puzzle had me really stumped to the point of asking for help. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing what you have to do but not knowing how to do it. Sadly, point and click games are filled with moments like these and Tales has had its fair share. Maybe I’m just impatient, I’m sure a lot of people would have no trouble with the challenges.
Frustrating puzzles aside, the story really does thunder along nicely, bringing out compelling twists and real heart warming situations. All the threads that have been laid have been sewn together in the last two Tales and completed in this last story. Few things really bothered me with Rise of a Pirate God – besides some frustrating puzzles – the only thing that really hindered my experience was the game crashing at one point and losing a chunk of progress. From this error I learned to save the game a lot more as the auto save is somewhat lacking. Nothing worse than having to rush through, what was enjoyable game play, just to get back to where you were.
So, Rise of a Pirate God wraps up what has been a brilliant series of games and a resurgence of a classic franchise. Tales not only pleased old school fans, but should have easily brought in legions of new fans with its pick up and play natire and expertly funny story. To quote the Treasure Hunter – “What’s wrong with a little colourful narrative?” – nothing at all, and I want more.
Hi-Score – Great End to the Story, Very Funny, Great Characters, Well…It’s Monkey Island!
Lo-Score – Lack of Autosaves, Some Puzzling Puzzles
Score – 8/10
