Game Review: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal

Launch of the Screaming Narwhal. It’s a funny, well written game, but the game play itself is boring and needlessly convoluted. Given Telltale’s track record, however, it’s still worth checking out, if only because the rest of the series will surely improve on it.

Telltale Games, for those that don’t know, is a gaming company founded by a bunch of guys from Lucas Arts from back in the good old days when they didn’t just make Star Wars games. Lucas Arts used to be one of the most prolific contributors of the adventure game genre, and brought us games such as Sam and Max Hit the Road, the Monkey Island series, and Day of the Tentacle. Telltale Games has, in the last three years or so, tried to pick up the mantle, and has produced several episodic adventure games (essentially 1 or 2 hour games that cost a small amount of money, and add up to make a series. Kind of like the Half-Life episodes, only they didn’t give up after the second one). I was a fan of these games both in my youth and now. The Sam and Max games Telltale makes nowadays are funny as hell, and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People captured the humor of the Homestar Runner-verse almost perfectly. So, when I found out they were making a new Monkey Island series, I jumped on it.

The Monkey Island series stars a pirate named Guybrush Threepwood, who, depending on player’s choices throughout the game, is like a cross between Jack Sparrow, Bugs Bunny, and Homer Simpson. Most of the games task him with saving his wife (and usually much more competent pirate) Elaine from his undead pirate rival, LeChuck. If the game sounds childish… well, it is. It’s like an interactive Saturday morning cartoon. It’s still very well written and funny, however, and that makes it okay.

The first game in the series, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, starts with Guybrush facing LeChuck in a final showdown in the middle of a stormy sea. This first section serves as the tutorial, and already the game runs into its first problem: movement.

Note that I’ve played the PC version. Allegedly, it’s also on consoles (either Wii or Xbox 360, I can’t remember which and can’t be assed enough to look it up), and I really can’t speak for how good or bad the controls are on it. On the PC the control is unpleasant. You move Guybrush by holding the mouse button. This causes a weird joystick thing to appear onscreen, which you rotate by moving the mouse. This, in turn, moves Guybrush. Now, before I had to do this, I didn’t realize it was possible for something to be slow and unwieldy at the same time… but now I do. Make no mistake, Guybrush will walk into every obstacle and wall in your path, and he will do so at a snail’s pace. Fortunately, this is an adventure and puzzle game, not a platformer, so this doesn’t make the game unplayable. After all, there are no enemies to dodge, you can’t fall off platforms, and the few timed puzzles in the game are generous enough that if you know what you’re doing, the slow movement rate won’t be an issue. But it’s still a pain, especially considering how well Telltale handles movement in its other games, where you click where you want to go and the character goes there automatically. Also, if you double click, the character runs. I have no idea why Monkey Island couldn’t do the same thing.

Anyway, after the tutorial, a series of terrible things happen, and Guybrush is stranded on Flotsam Island with a possessed hand that punches him and others, gives rude gestures at inopportune moments, and is just generally a dick. For a while now, the game proceeds in typical awesome Telltale fashion. You meet pirates and banter wittily with them, you start a bar fight, and you repeatedly try and fail to board a ship in frequently humorous ways. Eventually, however, your travels take you to the epitome of the game’s shortcomings: the jungle.

Telltale does not do wide open spaces well. This was established in the first episode of Strong Bad’s Cool Game, and it’s even more apparent here, where you must navigate more than a dozen similar jungle screens using the aforementioned crappy controls. For most of the jungle puzzles, you have to follow either animal sounds or the wind, kind of similar to the Lost Forest in Ocarina of Time. If the only speed you can move is a slow walking speed, these kinds of puzzles are a living hell. It takes forever to get from screen to screen, and if you screw up… oh, GOD HELP YOU if you screw up, then you have to start the whole thing over again.

There is a map screen that tries to alleviate the jungle levels a bit. If you find a specific landmark important to the game, you can use the map screen to travel there automatically. But it’s also irritating. The only way to activate the map screen is to arrive at the jungle entrance, and the map is not clearly marked. You see a bunch of trees, with random buildings and ruins sticking out of them. These ruins are not what you click on. No, what you have to do is pixel hunt through the trees, until you find the very specific, often very tiny, part you click on to get where you need to go. The only cue that you’ve found the right place is that the name will appear when you hover over it with the cursor, and if you blink, you’ll usually miss it.

Now, it probably feels like I just ripped this game a new one. After all, I just spent several paragraphs detailing how bad the game play is, and I didn’t even get into how esoteric some of the puzzles are (mostly the one with the cheese and all the creepy pedestals). But I’m actually willing to give this game a bit of a pass. The writing and jokes were good, and that’s really what Telltale Games is about. Also, this was the very first Monkey Island episode Telltale has attempted, and it always takes a little while for them to find the mark on a new series. After all, the first Strong Bad’s Cool Game was just as bad as this if not worse, but the rest of the series turned out to be great. And Sam and Max, inarguably Telltale’s most successful series to date, didn’t really find its stride until “Abe Lincoln Must Die”, which was the FOURTH episode.

So I’m willing to give Monkey Island another chance when the next game comes out. If the second game doesn’t improve on the first, I’ll write it off. But if the rest of Telltale’s games are any indication, I’m sure it will.