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Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay Review

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  • Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay Review


    Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay
    Release Date: August 20, 2009 (PC)
    Reviewed On: PC
    Also Available On: Nintendo Wii
    Developer: Telltale Games
    Publisher: LucasArts
    ESRB Rating: E 10+ - Alcohol Reference, Comic Mischief, Mild Language, Mild Suggestive Themes
    PEGI Rating: Not Available
    OFLC Rating: Not Available



    Guybrush Threepwood’s adventure continues yet again in the second episode of Tales of Monkey Island, the fifth game in the series overall. In the Siege of Spinner Cay, Guybrush must locate his wife Elaine after having discovered the shocking change to his nemesis LeChuck, and abruptly becoming under attack himself by an unknown female assailant. After this abrupt ending of The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal an intense sensation of impatience most likely came upon gamers as they wished to continue the story right then and there. The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal had already done a fantastic job of brining new life to the Monkey Island series but can The Siege of Spinner Cay keep that momentum or will it be a mid game dull that we could easily expect?

    When we last left Guybrush he had freed the winds of Floatsom Island to allow him and his crew to escape the island to set sail to save Elaine who was in the clutches of LeChuck. Once The Siege of Spinner Cay’s story commences we find that The Screaming Narwhal has been overtaken by a female mercenary Morgan LeFlay. LeFlay, working on orders from Doctor DeSinge, who you will remember from the previous episode and his infatuation over Guybrush’s Poxed hand, has paid LeFlay to bring Guybrush to him. This all occurs in the opening moments of the game and right away you must solve a somewhat complicated yet clever puzzle to beat LeFlay in a swordfight, be forewarned there are no witty comebacks here to save your skin, well, hand in this case.



    How are you going to get out of this one Guybrush?
    As the new episode progresses, Guybrush is introduced to new characters and an entirely new species, Merkfolk, the Mer-Maid like species mentioned in The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal. I found several problems with the story and new characters that were introduced that I was left quite sour after finishing this short second episode. The first of the seemingly never ending problems with The Siege of Spinner Cay is that every human character introduced in this episode look almost exactly like a character from the previous episode, with a few slight changes to voice and persona. This poor attempt at character development makes The Siege on Spinner Cay feel like a game that was quickly developed without much thought into the secondary characters.

    The addition of the Merfolk is probably the biggest blasphemous thing to happen to the Monkey Island franchise since it was created. While a good backstory is delivered on their existence and how they fit into the story you can not get over the fact that they do not fit well within the universe. Sure we have Zombies, Ghosts, a talking Skull named Murray (who has yet to make an appearance), and all around craziness that we know and love in Monkey Island but these Mermaids are not a good addition to the story. When looking back at former concept art for the Curse of Monkey Island you will see a Mermaid sketch that was unused with the reasoning by the artist that it did not fit the Monkey Island world. This is still very much true. In the end, the short story delivered in The Siege of Spinner Cay is enjoyable, primarily for the progression within, as well as hearing the few witty lines and remarks throughout.

    The Siege on Spinner Cay contains several good head scratchers of puzzles that need to be solved in order to progress; puzzles this time around seem actually more challenging then the last episode and anyone trying to rely on the hint system to aid you in some of these puzzles will be very out of luck. I don’t know how many times I heard Guybrush proclaim, “I need to find more stuff to plunder, arrr!” while I attempted to figure out a very challenging puzzle, which when completing you will realize had nothing to do with the hint in any way. Later on in the final stages of the episode you will hear Guybrush say the same hint again and this time it was even more out of place then before. Yet again Telltale chooses to control Guybrush with the WASD configuration for the keyboard and the still terrible mouse movement controls that were highly scrutinized in the previous episode’s review. Changing a primary control amidst the series development was not expected but the mouse movement control for the PC is still terrible and needs to be made known. While it may work fine for the Nintendo Wii version of the game it fares none to well here in the PC realm.



    Spinner Cay as shown in the background is the best looking thing in this episode.
    Not many improvements have been made over the graphical environment of The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal for The Siege of Spinner Cay. Many minor characters lack persona and need a finer touch of design to give them a more crisp sense with less of a molten blob look and feel. Spinner Cay it self is a wondrous piece of design with a new and original look, amazing looking animations, and camera angles that give the player a great visual experience. The larger island off of Spinner Cay also suffers from redundancy, the forest paths are nearly identical to the ones created for Floatsam island and lack originality after having seen them previously.

    Yet again The Siege of Spinner Cay falls hard from the new found glory of The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal as again secondary characters contain little to no voice change from their oddly similar lookalikes in the previous episode. Characters like LeFlay however are great additions to the cast, bringing in another dominate female force to the game. The Merfolk characters introduced seem to go under an identity crisis and it is really is hard to tell what characters are male and what are female, this too is a joke presented in the game but yet again these characters are very out of place. On the bright side however, Dominic Armato and the other major voice actors in the game do a splendid job of portraying their respectable characters. Oddly, the music in The Siege of Spinner Cay was nothing noteworthy, a few jungle like ambiance sounds and aquatic pieces are heard to give mood but the lack of any Monkey Island like theme was kind of disappointing and failed to bring me into the mood of playing a Monkey Island game.



    You two look and sound awfully familiar.
    What Launch of the Screaming Narwhal did to revive the franchise after what the under performing Escape from Monkey Island did to it, The Siege on Spinner Cay does it all again with rehashes of what we saw in the previous episode and the introduction of the Merfolk that don’t fit well at all. The Siege on Spinner Cay was truly a disappointment in several ways but it does have its good values as well, mainly being the story progression causing the player to anxiously await the third episode in the Tales of Monkey Island.


    Total Gaming Network Rating: 6.9/10
    Tales of Monkey Island is a five part episodic game. This review and score only reflects episode two The Siege of Spinner Cay and the content within it.
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