First Impression: Tales Of Monkey Island (PC) ~ The pox.

Game’s website

Since I finished Corpse Party, I started a new game. I got introduced the Monkey Island series by the PS2 game, Escape from Monkey Island. When I saw this game I had to play it. I started to play and really got into it. I finished the first chapter and then got distracted by guess, yeah, Corpse Party. This game is created by TellTale Games. The original creator of Monkey Island said it was probably his last game, since he feels he got to old to create games. Also, the original cast returns for the voice acting in this game. This game was released in episodes and my current progress is that I’m at the final part of the 2nd chapter. After that chapter, I’ll of course write a full review of this game. But for now, let’s dive into this game, and the first impressions it made on me. 

The pox.

This game is a nicely crafted adventure game. Yet, it annoys me that this game is in several episodes. When you save in episode 1, you can’t start that save in episode 2. It makes a lot of sense but here is the thing. When you install the game now, all the episodes are unlocked to actually you can start playing at the start of the last chapter and beat the game that way.

This game’s story really made me think. What if the bad guy actually becomes the good guy, well sort of. Up until now, I found the story rather enjoyable. It’s funny like you expect from a Monkey Island game. It made me laugh several times. Not to sound like a soulless person but I barely start laughing with games. I makes me smile at most. Since it mostly uses American humor and I enjoy European humor more. But this game actually has some funny parts for each culture.

The way the story is told is classical adventure game. Lucas Arts (rest in peace guys) has perfected this trade and a big hint in this game is that you need to think literally and out of the box in order to continue.

One thing that is a let down is the control. Instead of clicking where you want Treepwood to go, you need to hold the left mouse button and you start to move. Awn, that’s a let down. Also, bad TellTale Games! Not making the ability to drag & drop items to combine them? Making a separate option for that. Tsktsk.

Oh noes!

What I like in this game is that the main story line is more then just the main story line. It has several side plots that I want to see unfold. I’m extremely excited to see where the story is going to take me next.

Is it going to take me towards new colorful places? I hope so. The gameplay is actually a long chain of manipulating items to fool or trick people. And yes, I find this a fun way to be a pirate. As unbelievable it may sound, you play as a pirate. Which I still have trouble believing that our main character is a mighty pirate.

The world of Monkey Island is well made. Graphically the game is colorful and inviting. But the islands, well, they could  use a bit more variation. The two parts I played now have both a jungle part. Come on! That’s recycling. That could have been avoided.

I’m extremely thankful that you can save everywhere you want. It also gives a short summary of what the story is currently about. For in case you took a break and want to replay the game.

The voice acting is good. Sometimes it feels a bit out of place here and there but most of the times, it works. I would personally have said some lines stronger or else. Maybe I have still the amazing voice acting from Corpse Party haunting my judgement now.

What I expect

I expect this game to rock me off my socks. For now, this game has successfully drawn me in to it’s world. If I’ll let me go, we shall see about that. It might actually, but that’s the way how I play adventure games.

The music and sound has been great until now. Nothing to remark at the moment.

The animation is actually where I love the game the most for now. The detail that went in the art is great. The camera work in the swordfighting scenes is amazing enough to display the hard work the designers have put in this game.

Now, I would give this game surely a 7 out of 10 points. I’m going to finish this article here and I’m going to play this game further. To further judge this game. Maybe it goes up in points and maybe it goes down. We will see. Alright, thanks for reading. But before you leave, what’s your favorite Monkey Island game or moment? Discuss it in the comments.

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Review: Corpse Party (PSP) ~ The school of doom.

The site of this game – First impressions article

Warning for gamers & parents: This game is for 16 year and older. This game contains a lot of gore, blood and foul language. This game can be extremely creepy. For those who are easily afraid, play with caution. 

I started to play several XSeed games before, and I didn’t realize things about this game since I started reviewing it. While researching this game, I learned that this game is a port of a Japanese PC-98 game made by one person. He won a competition with that, nearly 5 million yen. The game is then ported to the PSP a year later. These are signs of a perfect game. But, is it? Or is this game an experiment of that Japanese developer to check if the game is ready for western releases? It’s obvious from my first impression article that I liked this game an awful lot. Now that I finished the main story line, it’s time to give this a proper and full review. Is this game truly worth the praise I gave it? Or is the game now going to fall flat on its face? Let’s dive into Corpse Party. 

The ritual

It has been quite some time since I got scared from a video game. Horror games are usually a no-go for me. It contains jump-scares and cheap tricks for scaring you. Games like 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward are major exceptions to that rule.

But I wanted to change that one night and I booted up this game, just before I went to sleep, and I started to play this game with earphones in. And I am glad that I did. Like I said in previous articles, I love myself a good story. And this story really drew me in.

The game is also based on a manga. And I now want to read the manga, to see how good the recreated it. If the manga or the game was first, it isn’t clear to me, I can’t tell.

But this story made me gasp, be silent and got all my attention. The pacing is just perfect. The game is creepy. Very creepy, but it doesn’t overdo the creepiness at any point. The game is creepy if you read the text. The point here is that the writing is extremely well done.

What adds to the game is the voice-acting. The voice acting is where I think this game shines. The Japanese voices really add to the story and make you feel the emotion that they tried to show. Also, the sound of the voices matches the characters displayed on the screen quite well, and I didn’t have any character where I would use another voice.

So, the story is extremely well done. And it really gets thrilling. Plot twists are around every corner. Sadly enough, it’s obvious sometimes what the fate of some characters will be but how slow or how fast it goes down really makes the game unpredictable.

Uniqueness

The gameplay caught me off guard. I’m quite surprised how many visual novel games have such unique gameplay.

Your goal is to escape a cursed school and find your classmates and teacher. But, at that cursed school something extremely terrible happened. And something is there to stop your progress. That’s all I can tell you without spoiling the story too much.

The game has 5 chapters. The length of each chapter continues to grow larger. With the amazing finale with over a 2-hour playtime if you don’t get stuck anywhere.

There is a twist. The game has multiple endings in each chapter. And these can be triggered by one wrong move. This makes the game difficult to play. This game won’t hold your hand, and you fell a sense of reward if you finish a chapter. There are points that give you hints but overall, it will be all up to you.

There is one major flaw with the gameplay though. The save system. I didn’t like it one bit. You can save by using candles placed all over the map. But some are so far out that when you get a wrong end, you get frustrated. Also, you can save your system data, which means you save the tags you found, and the game also saves that you achieved a certain wrong ending. Which can get confusing. There is also a save feature that you can only use once. If you load that save file, the save deletes itself after loading. This isn’t such a great feature. For a good save file system, Virtue’s Last Reward got it right.

I’m here.

The music and sound are extremely well done. The music does what’s supposed to do. For some players, it can feel a bit out of place but for me, it actually worked. I really gave me that Virtue’s Last Reward vibe and really got me hooked. If I can buy the album somewhere, I certainly will.

Although, on very rare occasions you can make the music glitch out and not play. And some parts don’t have music. But this is so nitpick.

The sound effects, something I am always very strict about, well-made me zip my review mouth. Really, they are good. Everything sounds like it’s supposed to sound, and it doesn’t have any sound effects too much or too little. They got it right with this game.

Graphically, this game looks dated. And is this a bad thing? Not at all. If you compare it with how it was in the PC-98 version the game got quite a big improvement in the graphics. But I love how they didn’t make the graphics become “too new”. It still has that feel of the original games without being too “ugly” for the graphic lovers. The characters look nice and the location of the game is lovely. But, there is one flaw in the graphic department.

The animation isn’t all that great. Lines where bridges need to come, walking in less then 5 frames, some characters seem to slide over the scene instead of walk. It feels extremely basic. It doesn’t take you out of the experience, but it really brings the game down in my opinion. It’s a big missed opportunity.

Before I forget, this game also got the amount of gameplay and story quite right. There are parts where you need to go through large chunks of text, but you get a lengthy part to play too.

There are also 10 additional chapters. I think you can unlock them by getting the wrong ends or collecting certain tags. I haven’t played these yet, but it surely adds to the replay value.

And that’s about all I can say about this game, let’s go on to the conclusion.

Conclusion

The good:

+ Bad-ass story.

+ Memorable characters, setting, story…

+ Graphics feel rightfully old school.

+ The music is one of the best I have heard in a while.

+ Sound effects are well done.

+ The voice acting really adds to the game.

+ Lengthy game.

+ It will truly challenge your skills.

+ Different endings.

The bad:

– Save feature.

– Animations aren’t polished.

– The rare music issues and silent area’s.

Conclusion:

I barely score games a full 100. And this game got close. The game is really well-made and got me into gaming once more. I was slowly growing out of gaming and wanting to review and write again. Yet, this game made me change my mind.

The story is unique, doesn’t exploit the usual clichés and takes twists and turns without getting too complex. The music is great, and the voice acting adds to the game. I can’t repeat it enough.

If you play this game in the dark or not, it’s up to you. But pay attention, it will draw you in and hold you there for as long as you can play the game.

Apart from the major flaw of the animation and the bad save features, this game feels flawless. Leave in the comments what you think of this game.

Score: 95/100