God bless ‘em, those busy pleasure-makers over at LucasArts. They’ve dared to dip in that well of legendary adventure gaming called Monkey Island for the fourth time, and what we’ve got for a modernized sequel is Escape From Monkey Island, which is a real treat not simply because the adventure game market has been so barren.

Escape From Monkey Island practically glows with style.

Click the thumbnail for full image. (90K)

The Monkey Island saga, in case you’ve been playing 3-D shooters all these years, is the story of a skinny pirate wannabe with the unlikely name of Guybrush Threepwood. He’s been wooing/ chasing/rescuing his "plunder bunny" Governor Elaine Marley through the last three Monkey Island games, staving off danger, curses, and pending world domination in the form of the ghost pirate LeChuck. If you want any more detail than that, it gets relentlessly, delightfully more bizarre.

This is you … er, Guybrush!

Click the thumbnail for full image. (102K)

The Monkey Island games are beloved for their unstoppable humor, their high quality, sneaky surprises, an absurd sense of present-day characterizations and things injected into a centuries-old Caribbean world, and a hilariously gnarly sense of puzzle logic. Escape From Monkey Island steps forward from the series with hardware-accelerated 3-D graphics, apparently the same engine LucasArts used in Grim Fandango (to excellent effect). Otherwise, it fits neatly as a sequel to the other games, nearly keeping pace with the expected levels of cleverness, weirdness, and fun.

The most striking anachronism in Escape From Monkey Island is that it shuns the familiar mouse. While it is flashy with its 3-D graphics engine, clean and well-mixed sound, and smooth animation, it’s like a weird step back to the oldest DOS games to be denied a mouse cursor when confronted with a graphics screen, or even with a menu of choices. Don’t reach for that rodent! You’ve got your keyboard to handle the job instead.

Escape From Monkey Island features the usual island map navigation shortcuts.

Click the thumbnail for full image. (104K)

This doesn’t turn out to be a major downfall—I thought of it more as a quirky design choice. Learn a handful of keystrokes and you’ll be fine; the game’s certainly worth ignoring your mouse for a while. Well, I’ll still register my complaint that it remains clumsy to select onscreen objects by moving and turning Guybrush toward them.

The 3-D graphics engine provides the significant departure for this installment of Monkey Island, and at times the characters’ expressions can seem empty. But in general, the expressive animation and the goofy character modeling prove adequately enthralling, putting some spark of life in the polygons. "Going 3-D" is more troublesome in terms of control, where now it is trickier to keep Guybrush pointed in an intended direction, and the camera angles aren’t always optimal. Annoyances.

As humor goes, Escape From Monkey Island has a few tough acts to follow, as the original Monkey Island game seems bright and funny still, and any nostalgia surrounding it only adds to this tricky legacy. While there are stretches of dialogue that fall flat in this game, in general it displays a goodly quantity of twisted wit. You’ll giggle at the sight of Starbuccaneer’s, where you can pick up a groggocino. You’ll groan at Monkey Kombat. You’ll scratch your artificial skin at the Palace of Prostheses.

Which leads us to the puzzles. For me, one hallmark of good puzzle design is that you’ll struggle to find an answer. I prefer finding some guiding clues to getting completely stumped, but after I see a puzzle’s solution I’d at least like to believe I might have figured it out on my own, given another century or two.

The outrageously nutty puzzles in Escape From Monkey Island are like that. I had to look up a solution more than once, I’m afraid, but even then I could appreciate the thread of loony, convoluted logic that led from point A to point M. Hats off. (If you apply the seal oil to your head, then …) To prevent you from ever getting completely halted by a puzzle, LucasArts kindly includes a complete walkthrough published by Prima Games.

Audio, in Escape From Monkey Island, really brings the whole production up a notch. The usual "soft Caribbean" Monkey themes are easy on the ears, and the voice acting is thoroughly compelling. As with so many other LucasArts games, the top-notch voice acting is superb; Guybrush, Elaine, LeChuck, and everyone sounds just right. (And speaking of the old gang, it’s a fun surprise to see some returning faces from the very first game.)

It’s probably clear by now that I’m an enthusiastic fan of the first Monkey Island game, and of the series. I’m pleased to report that Escape fits in with its predecessors by showing a fine degree of hilarity and weirdness; I think the writers may have fallen off the monkey bars one too many times. Overall grade: A-.

Escape From Monkey Island shouldn’t slip on a banana peel if your PC meets the following minimum requirements: Windows 95, 98, Me, or 2000; 200 MHz CPU (266 MHz recommended); 32 MB RAM (or 64 MB for Windows 2000 users); a 4 MB PCI or AGP Direct3D or OpenGL-compatible graphics adapter; a 16-bit sound card; a quad-speed (4X) IDE or SCSI CD-ROM drive; a keyboard (gamepads and joysticks also supported); and DirectX 7.0a (included on the CDs) or higher. See the bottom of the box for additional details, including a list of known-supported 3D accelerator cards.

Escape From Monkey Island
[street: $40]
LucasArts
ESRB rating: Teen ("T"), citing "comic mischief," "suggestive themes," and "use of tobacco and alcohol."

Lighter Blue: Mini-Reviews

A Brief Look at Tony Hawk 2
I’m no skateboarder, and I harbor no desires in that vein. But there is something undeniably attractive about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, which puts you in the highly scuffed shoes of a pro skater (choose from over a dozen), for an intriguing gaming experience. While it just takes a few controls to amaze yourself with some high velocity tricks, you’ll find the interface lets you build a hefty repertoire of moves. You’ll apply these skills in the skateparks, which contain hidden areas, maybe a shortcut or two, and a variety of objects on (or against) which you can perform.

The graphics engine isn’t state-of-the-art, but it’s passably good. And you could wish that the skatepark editor included all the features that were used in the making of the game’s own levels. Maybe the rowdy, hard-core punk/rock soundtrack isn’t your style. Well, whatever. What makes Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 so surprisingly good is its depth and smoothness of game play, its varying goals, the clever touches in the skateparks’ design, and the effectiveness of its graphics & music working in concert. Pretty cool. Grade: A-.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2
[street: $30]
Gray Matter/Neversoft/Activision
ESRB rating: Teen ("T"), citing "mild animated violence" and "mild language"

A Brief Look at Flight Sim 2000 Pro
Doggone it, look what has been grounded in our Grievously Overdue Software Reviews pile this time. Microsoft’s Flight Simulator has got to be one of the longest living game franchises in PC history. (See also: Ultima). The latest version, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000, has been completely re-done for Y2K, including a greatly improved graphics engine, truly useful tutorial lessons (finally), and vast heaping quantities of landscape data. Imagine a flight sim with 50 detailed cities (6 rendered in high-res) and over 20,000 airports.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 comes in two flavors: standard and "Pro." The version being examined here, the Professional Edition, comes with a few extra aircraft (Mooney Bravo and the King Air 350), another half-dozen high-res cities, a flight dynamics editor, an instrument panel editor, a larger manual, and more. It’s an impressively huge software offering.

Flying over Paris, in Flight Sim 2000.

Click the thumbnail for full image. (118K)

There are a few problems in these friendly skies. Graphically, Microsoft is playing catch-up to a handful of competitive flight sims—and while the improvement is welcome, I’d say they haven’t quite caught up yet. Also, this simulator seems starved for high-end hardware; if you’re not running a state-of-the-art CPU, expect to have to turn off some graphical features. It is good to see this venerable Flight Sim brought closer to current standards; my guess is that their next version may show even more polish. Grade: B.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 Professional Edition
[street: $63]
Microsoft
ESRB rating: Everyone ("E")