Completed the first part.. Now what?

[Valfader]

All right, so I pre-ordered the game with much anticipation. Did the same thing with the Curse of Monkey Island Special Edition as well.
It is now 05:30 AM (GMT+1), and I have played through the entire game. I was even stuck at a certain part in the jungle for about 25 minutes. So the total enjoyable gametime in this part came down to about 4 hours. And that includes listening to the dialogues as well as experimenting with different item merge combinations.

All in all I wasn't so much disappointed with the game itself, rather than the shortness of the episode. After all, there was a lot of fuzz in regards to the release.. And I now have to wait a full month to continue? What's the point of that?

It seems to me like the one episode-per-month release plan was something you did in order to buy time to continue coding the game. Which in my oppinion is a bad thing. I will now have to endure the frustration of waiting to see what happens next for nearly 6 months.. And for what?

I'm already coming up with a wall of text here, so I'll try to shorten it down. This is what you did good and bad in Tales of Monkey Island:

GOOD STUFF:
- Smooth running game engine
- Pleasant graphics
- Familiar voice acting
- Some challenging puzzles
- Some references to the previous games
- A new twist on the whole LeChuck-thing

BAD STUFF:
- No obvious way of skipping dialogue you've heard before
- The character controls are horrible
- You did not specify a release time, other than claiming the game to be available for downloading at the 7th of July. This kept me waiting for 19 hours.
- The integrated hint system in the game, even with non-frequent hints, becomes annoying really fast.
- Most dialogue was boring, even though the choises to choose from were not.
- This game did NOT make me laugh out loud like the other games did.
- The game was way too short to justify the long wait time for part 2.


So, as you can tell, I am pretty disappointed with the release and certain aspects of the game. Even though I have been a loyal fan for nearly 20 years. I'm hoping that the rest of you will share some input here as well when you complete the game, and hopefully give a better average experience than the one I had.

Sincerely,

-Valfader

[thin029]

I loved it, I'm 100% satisfied.
Can't wait for part 2

[xChri5x]

I know what you mean. How am I suppose to live with myself for a whole month!?
Oh, woe is me!

[Alhazred]

Originally Posted by Valfader

- No obvious way of skipping dialogue you've heard before

Right Click? Lots of game use it so it kinda felt natural for me.

[Frogacuda]

You can skip dialog with a right click.

[awa64]

Originally Posted by Valfader

BAD STUFF:
- No obvious way of skipping dialogue you've heard before

Right click.

[tisan]

- No obvious way of skipping dialogue you've heard before

Right click, it'll skip through each dialogue segment

[Fury]

Responding to criticism

- Right click to skip dialog.

- The release wasn't clear, that irked me too. Still, they delivered.

- Hints were too frequent, next time I'll turn em off completely. Still, it's a good feature, removes the guilt of using a walkthrough.

- The dialog WAS funny! Seriously, it made me laugh out loud a few times. It's worth your time to talk through every option, some of em are pretty funny.

- The game was relatively long for an episodic game. Sure, it was over in 3 hours, but you did a lot of puzzles, and if you add it all up that's 15hours of MI. Which is great, even compared to full price games.

Even though it will be awhile until Episode 2, we got the game like 2 months after it was announced (or was it 1? felt like 2...). That's pretty freaking awesome, and I am looking forward to playing em one a month. If you don't like it, just wait until all 5 are out, though I doubt ANYONE* could pull that off.

*any monkey island fan that is

[xChri5x]

You can skip dialog with a centre click

[werpu]

Actually since someone said the length was roughly for hours then I would not see it as a negative point, that is the usual Telltale episode time. In the end if you sum it up you will get 20 hours of gameplay with five episodes which in fact is pretty good.
The funny thing is first it annoyed me as well but now I really like it, in fact I never really was able to finish most games due to the lack of time I have to spend the time constantly on a game, the episode format is perfect for me :-)

[tisan]

- No obvious way of skipping dialogue you've heard before

Right click, it'll skip through each dialogue segment

[adventureaddict]

I see no problem with the length of the game! Many times I thought it was about to end and it kept going. I was actually pretty pleased.

[Fury]

This was a great game. What escape should have been.

[Calbeb]

I agree with you about the dialogue. It espeically irked me when there are three interesting choices and you end up hearing the same thing no matter which you clicked.

The puzzels, graphics, and story all did work for me though. I digged the gameplay a lot. The controls didn't seem bad at all, although I just slightly prefer pure point and click over moving with the arrow keys at all.

But as for it being released on a monthly schedule, well, that's telltale. It allows them to create the kind of content they do fairly quickly, allowing them to iterate on previous products while providing an efficent way to monetize their products. They are pretty routinely declared to be the sole people out there doing episodic gaming right, on a fairly tight schedule. You can wait five months, which frankly is less time than you would normally have to wait for a full title so soon after it's announcement, or you can enjoy 3-4 hours of quality pirating a month, likely followed a year later by another 5 months of Monkey Island adventures.

Hopefully the will fix the problems they had with the release this time around though, so it won't happen again next month.

[Frogacuda]

Originally Posted by Calbeb

I agree with you about the dialogue. It espeically irked me when there are three interesting choices and you end up hearing the same thing no matter which you clicked.

Remember in Monkey Island 1-4 when it did exactly this? Yeah, that was funny, and it still is. Cut Telltale some slack.

[CitizenOfMelee]

Everyone complaining sucks.

It's like you all had sex with Angelina Jolie and complain about the bedsheets.

The four hours I spent playing this was more fun, re-vistable and enjoyable than the entirety of Escape from Monkey Island.



.. and the whole 'omg, Guybrush will say something different if I don't choose one of the HILARIOUS non-serious statements that I have just read and enjoyed and imagined Dominic voicing' isn't new. It isn't bad either, it's great. Fucking... aah.

[johnniewalk3r]

its episodic content (dont know if i spelled that right) you paid for 5 episodes! if one last 4 hours, multuply that by five and you got twenty hours of gameplay stop bitchin?!

[Arodin]

I have completed it, and I have to disagree on most points. I was quite pleased with the game.

Originally Posted by Valfader

GOOD STUFF:
- Smooth running game engine
- Pleasant graphics
- Familiar voice acting
- Some challenging puzzles
- Some references to the previous games
- A new twist on the whole LeChuck-thing

I agree here. Voice acting was actually better than I expected, considering they hired a new actor for LeChuck and the Voodoo lady. The LeChuck actor was not as good as Earl Boen, but he was not as bad as I had feared. And the new actress for the Voodoo Lady was excellent -- very close to the voice from previous games, but with a better accent I thought.

BAD STUFF:
- No obvious way of skipping dialogue you've heard before

Right click. I figured it out immediately. I don't know why people had trouble with this.

- The character controls are horrible

The click-and-drag to move thing did not work at all. I hated it. However, WASD worked fine for me. Similar to the controls for EMI and Grim Fandango, but actually better since you can use the mouse too.

- You did not specify a release time, other than claiming the game to be available for downloading at the 7th of July. This kept me waiting for 19 hours.

Big Whoop (tm). Sure I would have liked if they released it earlier, but as others have said already, we've waited 10 years so what's a few more hours. They had server issues. Shtuff happens.

- The integrated hint system in the game, even with non-frequent hints, becomes annoying really fast.

Surprised to see this complaint - I hardly ever noticed any hints at all with it set at the default which is pretty high I think. I can maybe recall Guybrush giving one or two hints the whole time. Maybe I just figured stuff out fast.

- Most dialogue was boring, even though the choises to choose from were not.

I agree with you somewhat here. I don't mind when the recorded dialogue is not exactly the same as the choice I select, but too often I'd choose something like "That's amazing! I didn't think it would ever fit up your nose!" and then Guybrush would say "That's amazing!" This is not an actual example from the game, by the way, but you get the idea. If they're going to record something different, at least let it be as interesting as the dialogue I chose.

- This game did NOT make me laugh out loud like the other games did.

I laughed quite a few times, and at least smiled other times. The hand gags were particularly amusing to me, as was Singe. The joke with the Voodoo lady going on about her love life with her voice muted as Guybrush covers his ears also made me laugh. Those are a few examples, anyway.

- The game was way too short to justify the long wait time for part 2.

Seemed to be on par for an episodic game. Didn't seem to be any shorter than a Sam & Max episode. Longer than many previous Monkey Island "chapters" and this series will have 5 chapters instead of 3. Another way to look at it, this episode x5 is a good length for an adventure game that costs $34.95.

[Armakuni]

The click-and-drag to move thing did not work at all. I hated it. However, WASD worked fine for me. Similar to the controls for EMI and Grim Fandango, but actually better since you can use the mouse too.

I disagree. I got used to them in minutes, I think they work well. I didn't touch the keyboard other than for running.

[AlmostApollo]

I really loved the game. I'll happily wait another month to get my Monkey Island fix.