So I just finished Escape for the 2nd time, and for the first time in 10 years

[eMKayeN]

Spoiler warning for the game's story btw, in case you haven't played it before:

Yeah I haven't finished it since my first playthrough back in 2000. Upon finishing I've discovered that it gets a lot of hate where I don't think it's really warranted. The only bad thing I have to say is that the story gets a bit stupid towards the very end of when you're on Monkey Island with the inconsistency regarding Herman's ID and Giant Monkey Robots.

Other than that it's a good game, Lucre and Jambalaya are nice big levels filled with great locations and music, as well as some challenging puzzles, to me that is always the most important thing for an adventure game to have. Monkey Kombat is actually fairly straightforward and not that hard to understand, the only thing is you will have to write down the combinations unless you have an amazing memory.

So to summarise, Escape is better than what a lot of people say, only the story at the very end of the game is an issue, and I don't think that's enough for me perosonally to ruin the game, much like the removed intro in MI2:SE doesn't ruin that at all. Story is nice, but it usually takes backseat to the locations, music and puzzle difficulty for me.

Escape is still bottom tier when compared to the first 3 games, but it's not an awful game by any means. I've been doing a playthrough of all the games in a row and am moving on to my 2nd playthrough of Tales soon.

[Epic Kiwi]

I've tried several times to replay Escape over the years since my first playthrough, and I never make it off of Melee Island before I call it quits. It's mostly because of the unnecessarily bad control scheme and ugly, ugly art. I've nothing against 3D Monkey Island games but at the time EMI was made the technology just wasn't able to make it look good, and it shows, especially next to CMI's lovely hand-drawn work. I still have the original cds, so who knows, maybe I'll be able to get through it again someday...

[a3HeadedMonkey]

To say the only bad thing about Escape is the story at the end is absurd. I call fake on this "second playthrough in 10 years" story.

Why else would someone ignore the illogical puzzles, terrible graphics, bad characterisation & poor controls; unless they were some sort of EMI fanboy?

[eMKayeN]

That's another thing actually, the fact I remembered the puzzles pretty well after 10 years surprised the hell out of me. I don't think I struggled playing through at all.

And yeah it was only the 2nd time I've finished it. Explain how I'm an EMI fanboy when I've just said it's bottom tier. The controls aren't an issue at all, the point of this topic was just to say how Escape isn't as bad as it's made out to be. It isn't a crap game at all. But it's still bottom tier in regards to Monkey Island games.

People who haven't played it in ages, I suggest to give it another playthrough.

[alkapel]

Escape is a great game!! I prefer to play MI games on that level, than not to play any new MI games!

[Mermaid]

I finished it yesterday after some time of not touching it, and it's really mainly the ending that literally hurts. No wonder they left Monkey Island out in TOMI, I mean, what's that island without its monkey head? And why would the head have turned into silver after it had been a real monkey head in SOMI and CMI? Doesn't Herman also tell that the lava catacombs had vanished from beneath the head?

I still don't get how they could alter the looks and history of that island so recklessly.

[tabstis]

I'm playing it again at the moment actually - just finished Act 1. Some of the puzzles I remembered:
-Skin on manhole and entering bank
-Termites on the stick and following Ozzie
-Navigating swamp
-Recruiting Carla and Otis

I didn't remember:
-Duck and grease trick
-Getting him to break the cane
-Most of the prosthetics shop stuff

Some of them made no sense at all:
-Names on the manhole to the story???
-Spraying cologne on the platypus???
-Making a completely random perfume???

[Farlander]

Meh. The only MI game of the LA four ones that had good ending gameplay-wise was MI2. Story-wise - MI1 (MI2 is a very mixed cause because of it's whackiness).

CMI and EMI endings are, IMO, not good both gameplay-wise and story-wise. A little gripe I have with CMI, by the way, that it's essentialy a remake of SMI. General plotline, that is. However, it does give us nice and atmospheric islands and characters. The ending is still not good in my opinion.

And, after the conversation about Elaine's logic of her actions in the end of MI2 (in the thread about MI2:SE) I've started thinking about MI2's plot, and it actually has quite a number of plot holes in itself (I've never noticed that before). But maybe, if we assume it's all fantasy of a child, everything goes. The thing is, Ron/Dave/Tim said in the commentary that they on the move added some twists there and there and there, add this and this... I have a feeling that EMI developers just wanted to add some twists to the ending too, but.... it didn't work out, obviously.

And each MI game has it's fair share of illogical or annoying puzzles. And there's not that many in any game. It's just the ones EMI has are far too annoying.

[zhebrica]

Originally Posted by a3HeadedMonkey

To say the only bad thing about Escape is the story at the end is absurd. I call fake on this "second playthrough in 10 years" story.

Why else would someone ignore the illogical puzzles, terrible graphics, bad characterisation & poor controls; unless they were some sort of EMI fanboy?

Huh? What would be the point of lying about what he thinks of the game? You think he's intentionally trying to mislead people to get them to try the game, or what? Why would anyone do that?

[coolguy721]

the controls never really bothered me probably because i always use a game pad. If your don't like the controls i suggest you use a joystick or game pad.

[Friar]

Originally Posted by Epic Kiwi

I've tried several times to replay Escape over the years since my first playthrough, and I never make it off of Melee Island before I call it quits. It's mostly because of the unnecessarily bad control scheme and ugly, ugly art. I've nothing against 3D Monkey Island games but at the time EMI was made the technology just wasn't able to make it look good, and it shows, especially next to CMI's lovely hand-drawn work. I still have the original cds, so who knows, maybe I'll be able to get through it again someday...

Try changing the controls in the settings to camera-based (so left moves him left relative to the screen, rather than rotates him). It makes it alot easier (although it can be a pain with smaller objects, and if the camera angle changes between scenes).

As for the art, i loved the 2D backgrounds. And the character models weren't horrendously bad either.

[Farlander]

And the character models weren't horrendously bad either.

I think they were good for it's time. And, though the models are not very much detailed, the animation is great, IMO. Characters had a lot of... character.

[Epic Kiwi]

Originally Posted by Friar

Try changing the controls in the settings to camera-based (so left moves him left relative to the screen, rather than rotates him). It makes it alot easier (although it can be a pain with smaller objects, and if the camera angle changes between scenes).

As for the art, i loved the 2D backgrounds. And the character models weren't horrendously bad either.

I should also mention that I dislike using Page Up/Down to select objects, using letter keys for interacting, and having to first take out inventory items in order to use them on other items. I'm not sure who'd find that a better alternative to clicking on things. It just kind of gets to me whenever I'm playing and prevents me from enjoying the experience.

I guess liking the character models comes down to personal preference, I hated them though. They looked especially ugly during the cutscenes where you see them close up, and Guybrush's constant Ctrl-Alt-Del grin annoyed me.

[doodo!]

I seriously don't understand what is so bad about this game's graphics.






For the time, which I played video games way before then, they used the absolute best poly count possible. the textures aren't stretched, the backgrounds are clean and not blurred...

I don't get a head ache from playing the game like most 3D games before it...(Mostly 2D)



The shapes are distinct and the best for the time...unlike this...


Unlike this the textures are fitted properly, things aren't blurry...
The 2D is gracefully mixed with your 3D...Dynamic lighting...(Simon 3D is a classic example of low grade 3D for the time and now )



Any one who comes at this game for its graphics is not only a newb to gaming, but knows absolutely nothing about video game evolution, and has an extremely closed mind and shouldn't speak of standards and quality because they know nothing of it and nothing of what it was....



1999 Prince of Persia 3D, character models were great. Still games like EMI have superior backgrounds, environments for their time. Absolutely superior...Let alone that EMI looks mostly smooth and isn't horribly angler.

Woopie it wasn't 2D. It wasn't bad either....

The games I started off on are so old you can't even find screen captures of them because I don't think there even was a print screen or computers now able to run them because they're so old and you can't get screens of them on new computers...

3D has never been that great, it still looks like shit in movies...even Doom 3 had heads that weren't rounded in it...

Waaa
Waaaah...

....

The game looks fine and has aged well enough.

[akaimizu]

I actually don't hate on any Monkey Island. Escape was one of my lesser favorite ones, but to tell the truth, I can say that I'm a bit harsh for saying that. For me, yes, the monkeys and the robot thing kind of was one thing I didn't like. But I think the other things that hurt it was that, in my opinion, it just couldn't live up to Curse of Monkey Island. Curse was so incredibly good, it was one of those "How in the world could Monkey Island get better than this" kind of moments. So Escape kind of felt a bit like the sequel-itis thing. That, and the way you end up doing stuff in Curse that go way beyond what you accomplish in Escape. Before Escape, Guybrush's level of accomplishments always seemed to *ramp up* from sequel to sequel.

Thus is why TOMI really worked out well following Escape. TOMI kept it episodic, but by the time you finished the game, you realized that Guybrush did stuff that was pretty big.

[Friar]

Originally Posted by Epic Kiwi

I should also mention that I dislike using Page Up/Down to select objects, using letter keys for interacting, and having to first take out inventory items in order to use them on other items. I'm not sure who'd find that a better alternative to clicking on things. It just kind of gets to me whenever I'm playing and prevents me from enjoying the experience.

I guess liking the character models comes down to personal preference, I hated them though. They looked especially ugly during the cutscenes where you see them close up, and Guybrush's constant Ctrl-Alt-Del grin annoyed me.

I agree, it's not as great as pointing and clicking, but i wouldn't say it's terrible. The control scheme was obviously built for gamepads, so i would reccomend picking one of those up, or a PS2 copy. I was fine with the controls in the PS2 version, even with the pressing buttons to do different actions. Each to their own i guess.

[Spadge]

I'm fine with Escape. Curse had a giant amusement park in the end and I don't see why a rollercoaster gets more love than a giant robot. Plus I always thought the monkeys build that robot from whatever was left from the amusement park.
As for Herman's story, well, I might have solved that too. You see, Marley, his crew and Herman were all on the Sea Monkey and... because the whirlpool... timetravel... dressed as a cannibal... but the three-headed monkey was Nor Treblig... bla bla... Australia Cup and the Four Map Pieces. And thats probably how it happened.

[zhebrica]

Regarding the 3D, it depends on what you're comparing it to. Compared to other 3D games at the time, EMI was one of the better looking ones. But compared to 2D games of the same period, it was ugly. The tech just wasn't there yet to make a 3D game that could compete with a 2D game visually, but there was apparently market pressure to use 3D models in every new game. Even at the time, I didn't like this trend -- yes, developers have to use new technology to make it better, but it resulted in a lot of very crude-looking games.

Probably the games that looked the best at the time and have aged the best are the more stylized ones. I think Grim Fandango is a good example of this -- the models look like they were designed to be simple, rather than looking like a poor approximation of something else. EMI doesn't have that going for it, so the look of it doesn't hold up as well, in my opinion.

[Rather Dashing]

Originally Posted by a3HeadedMonkey

Why else would someone ignore the illogical puzzles, terrible graphics, bad characterisation & poor controls; unless they were some sort of EMI fanboy?

The controls and graphics were certainly at least par for the course in their time. They haven't aged particularly well, but if you played a lot of games in the era and love and enjoy them then the look of Escape really isn't that bad at all. In fact, it's pretty exceptional, as doodoo! explains very well above. And this isn't even mentioning that they not only had good models, but there was also a great variety to them. Guybrush's clothing was excellently taken care of in this game, and it's something that isn't praised enough.

In terms of poor characterization, Curse ruined that already, so it's hard to start faulting it with Escape.

[Ash735]

Originally Posted by doodo!

I seriously don't understand what is so bad about this game's graphics.

Ahh, seeing that picture reminds of that brilliant Melee Town Docks theme from the game, which oddly enough only appeared for like 10 seconds in the actual game but was used as background music for the Bonus Concepts on the PS2 version.