Tales of Monkey Island: Lair of the Leviathan Review
With the third episode in the Tales of Monkey Island series, TellTale has finally hit its mark. After the last Sam & Max season came to a close, there seemed to be a little creative gap. Wallace and Grommit was good, but it lacked a certain spark. The first two episodes of Tales have brought back some fantastic memories, but they fell just a little short of expectations.
Lair of the Leviathan, however, finally hits the mark. The writing is much tighter than in previous episodes, the puzzles are clever without being obtuse, and visually, it’s the most fun the series has been since Curse.
I think they’ve finally found Guybrush’s voice. There’s a simple scene near the beginning where Guybrush offhandedly tells “villain” Morgan LeFlay that he’ll talk his way out of a situation, and for the first time in this series, I believed him. And there’s one easy, but clever puzzle near the beginning that lets you see hints to the solution in the form of mini-flashbacks that’s pretty genius.
There are one or two puzzles that really drag, but overall the few hours of gameplay moves by incredibly fast. There’s only really one clear “placeholder” puzzle, involving collection of maggots, but even that’s pretty superfluous.
Extra Features:
The usual Easter Egg hunt here, but other than that, nothing to speak of.
Technical:
The review copy had the usual graphical glitches and technical errors, but this has been cleaned up for the the release as usual. The most major issue seemed to be with audio looping, but overall it came through very nice.
Graphics:
The new character models for this episode are pretty nice. I do have to say that the crew of new pirates looks more like castoffs from the Sam and Max games, but it’s nice to see some new faces around. The oft mentioned Coronado DeCava looks exactly like you’d hoped, which is perfect.
The set pieces for the episode are fantastic. The interior of the Manatee is a great throwback to the Curse art style, which is a great step forward. I’d hazard to say that it’s my favorite art design that Tell Tale has done so far.
Sound:
The dialog is the best they’ve written so far. The new characters are a bit hit or miss. I love DeCava’s silly accent, but the new pirates are a bit grating. There’s a “special guest appearance” that fans of the series will go nuts over, but it’s announced too far in advance.
They made the music a bit more of a focal point this time around, there’s even a puzzle that revolves around it partially. But there are some lulls in the intervening sequences that are a bit boring.
Replay Value:
There’s a bit of extraneous dialog and a couple Easter Eggs that you won’t find in a single playthrough, but there’s not much reason to come back and revisit the game after the initial playthrough.
Final Score: 9/10
With Sam and Max, it seemed like it took TellTale about three episodes in each season to figure out how the dialog and puzzles mesh. It bears itself out once again in “Lair of the Leviathan” The puzzles are perfectly balanced, and the dialog is smashing.
I’m still not sold on this series as a “season of episodes” because just when it starts to get rolling, the episode is over. I think they’ll be even better once you can string them all together. But as it is, I can’t recommend playing through “Lair of the Leviathan” enough. It’s the benchmark for the series so far.
If you’re interested in taking a look at the game, you can download a copy of the PC Demo at the TellTale Website.