Games

Tales of Monkey Island
Chapter 1 Launch of the Screaming Narwhal [2nd play]

Alright, here we go: Monkey Island 5. Released monthly at the end of 2009, I finally played this first chapter in August 2010... and then never got round to the rest. 12 years later, I'm gonna finish it this time! Though today I only played for about 20 minutes; enough to get through the opening cutscenes and tutorial. The latter was particularly necessary, as the control method is different again to any previous Monkey game. It feels more intuitive than Escape's, though. Weirdly, I don't remember it at all... but then, I only used it for 4 hours on one afternoon/evening 12 years ago, so maybe it's not "weird" at all.

Also noticeably better than Escape were the graphics. It's still not the slickest 3D game ever made — it's not designed to be, and wouldn't have been 13 years ago either — but it still looks pretty nice today, whereas Escape looks horrendously dated. It's also remarkable how cinematic it feels. Even interactive dialogue trees feel like they launches into a mini-cutscene with every option selected, using a variety of camera angles and whatnot, rather than the static "gameplay" perspective of... well, every other adventure game I've ever played. It's rather nice.