Tales of Monkey Island v. Original 4 [Inevitable Spoilers]
 

Now that all of Tales has been released, what's your (initial) reaction to the series as a whole? If you had to compare it with the other four.

Personally, I can't make up my mind if I like LCR better or TMI better. I think I like those two better than CMI. After that is SMI, and a big drop off to EMI. (But I still really, really like EMI and think it is severely underrated.)

1. LCR
2. TMI (little lower in rating becouse Chapter 1's jugle mazes)
3. CMI
4. SMI
.
5. EMI

I think I agree. While TMI Episode One was good, I gave it a lot of leeway because it was the first MI in ten years. I replayed it with my mom a couple of months later, and it was still really fun, but I think out of all the chapters it is the weakest of all five MI games, maybe excluding Escape if you count the first two parts of Escape as "Act One."

I think LCR's Act One is just better than TMI's Act One, but it's really close as a race overall I think.

It's almost impossible to compare all of these diverse games to one another. While I think telltale has taken the writing and narrative aspects to new levels, the game play seems to fall short in this retro gamer's opinion. I never really scratched my head too much in these "Tales" while I remember endless frustration during the classic ones (SOMI and LR).

In terms of storytelling though, Telltale has done a great job. More often than not, I felt like I was almost watching an animated film-in that is probably where I have my gameplay issues. I kind of felt that I was on rails while playing these episodes. While I didn't hate the ride at all, I would've liked to spend more than maybe 2 hours enjoying it.

In many ways, I feel this run was a lot like Curse: relatively straight-forward with a hard puzzle now and then. Both endings seemed relatively anticlimactic to me as well. However, if you've managed to make it through Zak McCracken you're happy with anything even resembling an ending screen.

On EMI behalf, I want to argue that it was a significantly harder game than CMI. Perhaps this is due to the illogical nature of some puzzles or Monkey Kombat in general. However, I did enjoy it when It came out, and I don;t mind playing here and again. Honestly, the whole kitschy consumerism idea was pretty genius, and took the franchise in a different direction. I mean who doesn't love anachronism?

So my order:

LR
CMI
TOMI
SOMI (It would rank higher, but it seems like LR is really this game on steroids)
EMI.

LeChuck's Revenge is on a pedestal of its own, and it's a hard thing to top. But I'd say Tales doesn't trail too far behind Secret, and it's WAY ahead of Curse and Escape in my book.

I think if some of the more...notorious...LCR puzzles were instead placed first in TMI...I would complain about how stupidly hard they were. I like a challenge, but plain illogical sucks. The whole bit with the library was cruel.

I agree with you- people would not stop complaining. However, there seems to have been this shift in gaming toward easiness. Why should games be easy? A friend of mine worked at a video game store and people would return games not because they were bad, but because they were hard.

Games are supposed to be a challenge. In fact, the whole idea of the genre itself is challenge. But, with MI, you have that guarantee of safety from death at least comforting you a little!

Therefore, I ask for more illogical puzzles. I want monkey wrenches, I want green spit, I want the dewey decimal system!

If I wanted to give you a challenge, I could hand you an a N64 and a copy of Goldeneye. "Here, kill all the bad people with your fists instead of guns." Just because something is challenging doesn't make it fun or good. Illogical puzzles (or, perhaps going out on a limb here, "stupid" puzzles that aren't based on logic but pure "piss you off and make you frustrated for the point of defeating you") are not good for adventure games.

I personally hated the puzzle with the clam and the bubble, but it was at least logical. After I solved it by accident, I understood it. Things like having to comb through a library of books to find something was kinda dumb. But there's a happy medium.

For me, Revenge is still the best of the series but Tales has taken 2nd place away from Secret.

Just fists? How the fuck could you ever get through the silo level?

Maybe there is a medium, but personally I didn't mind the library too much.

But here's a question- and it's bothered me for i guess about 15 years or so.

Why can't Dread take you to find the Monkey Head. When you charter the boat you even mention that you have a map from a boat you previously chartered and is waiting for you in port. Is this ridiculous or no?

Eh. Just an example. I'm just saying really hard puzzles need not necessarily be unfair puzzles.

I think the explanation is that he is an extremely superstitious man who says stuff like "That's the devil's triangle, can't go there mon" if you click the "forbidden places." His character is the excuse for Kate.

That, and he's only smart enough to sail to three places. It's like a cab driver who only knows a bit of town.

Man, I feel like I should know that. I guess now that I just know the correct path, I forgot why. Bullshit Captain Dread-however, I guess the monocle ties in nicely with that.

To me, CMI and MI2 will always be right at the top, always fighting, because both are such great games, but it's good to now have TMI right behind them, only let down by a few things. I do like TMI more than SMI and it's fair to say my opinion of EMI isn't exactly high. :)

I want this. Tales was far too easy with not enough puzzles. I do prefer it to EMI but at least escape was a challenge. Far too many dialogue puzzles in Tales and repeated puzzles (use hook on chest/look away while i steal your stuff) An engaging story, but drama and story wasnt the reason I got into adventure games. S&M season 2 was alot more like it in terms of diffuculty, I hope TMI s2 goes in the same direction. Very enjoyable nonetheless, but kinda relieved its over so we can finally look forward to sam and max :D

Oddly, I always was into MI games because of the story and characters and I never cared much about the puzzles. How would I rate the games? I wouldn't. Each has it's own merit. Heck, I even love EMI.

I can't say really because it's really a battle between ToMI, SoMI and MI2:LCR for me, and I cannot make a decision between them due to the fact that I cannot say how much my opinion for each has been influenced by things like nostalgia (for the older games) or novelty (for ToMI) to make a fair judgement, so I won't :p

Besides MI2 being on top of my list I can't really rank the others.
They're all good, even EMI (the only issue I had with it was that it screwed with previously set-in-stone plot elements, but up to then it was a good MI game).

The puzzles in TMI were overall not very satisfying. Some were really good, most were really obvious though, not to forget the repeated puzzles. Ep5: Dog+Sock 3 times in a row? and the hook+lock was probably the most overused puzzle I've ever seen.
A couple of puzzles solved themselves alone without me doing anything, especially dialogue puzzles that randomly lead to a solution. I prefer it when I first have the idea how to solve the puzzle and then solve it, instead of the other way round :(

BUT as said there were a couple of really good puzzles in there, and I count the Clam+locket in Ep5 to this, and the recipe map folding puzzle from Ep4 and a couple of others.
So, puzzlewise I have to rank TMI lowest on my list, which is however still not bad.

As for plot and MI-feel I guess it comes really close to SMI and MI2, good job here.

Overall, I think TMI was a really good addition to the MI series and I'm looking forward to a season 2.

1. LR/CMI - cant split them, both absolutely awesome games.
2. SMI
3. TMI
4. EMI

Some things about tales really bugged me - the reuse of puzzles, the amount of stuff unexplained, and probably most - that you never go to monkey island or have anything to do with it, whats up with that?

Having experienced almost the entire series in the last 48 hours, I think I can safely say I choose no favorites. Even Escape had its moments. Curse will always be a sentimental favorite, being my first adventure game, but I can't really see myself ranking them. To me they're all inextricably linked and if I'm going to play one of them, I'm probably going to end up spending a week (or in the case of the last time I did it, a day) running the whole series.

I guess I need to let the game as a whole sink in some more before making up my mind as to where I would place it in the MI hierarchy, but my initial reaction is that I place it below MI2 and SMI, but above CMI and EMI.