Nineteen years ago, a gaming series was born that was destined to become my most favourite of them all: Monkey Island. It spawned four games¹⁾, the first three of which I played through more than once just for the joy of it. To this day, I define the coolness of an electronic gadget by its ability to run ScummVM and thus Monkey Island on it.

A couple of weeks back, I came across the news about Telltale Games publishing an episodic new installment of the series, called "Tales of Monkey Island" or from here on ToMI. After I came down from my sudden lapse in coherence²⁾, I immediately preordered the season for PC. The first episode, “Launch of the Screaming Narwhal”, was released on July 7th, and I spent the last two evenings playing it through. To quickly summarise my review: “MONKEY ISLAND!!!”

If you don't mind, I'll leave the summary of the plot to others³⁾ and get straight to my µ-review. The puzzles so far lived up to its predecessors, and I even got stuck three or four times⁴⁾. The writing is MI-esque as well, as are the voice actors, including Dominic “Guybrush” Armato and Alexandra “Elaine” Boyd, and of course the music by Michael Land.

What struck me as somewhat odd first is the control scheme. ToMI isn't a real Point'n'Click adventure anymore regarding Guybrush's movements; you instead drag him around with mouse (somewhat like in NWN) or use WASD. That got me puzzled a couple of times when I clicked on the screen and that Might Pirate(TM) didn't walk where he was supposed to. Additionally, there's no action vocabulary anymore. The only thing you can do to interact is left-click, and depending on the object Guybrush either takes it, looks at it, talks to it, uses it, … – you don't know it beforehand. I'd have preferred an interface with a bit more choice like in CoMI. Also I encountered a couple of bugs: Guybrush warping a couple of meters forwards, Guybrush suddenly becoming invisible, and even a doubled item for a couple of seconds. Nothing serious though.

All in all, I'm very happy with my purchase, and am looking forward to the next four episodes throughout the next four months If you are as of yet unsure whether to buy the game or not, there's a demo available.