Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 3: Lair of the Leviathan

Chances are you already know if you want this third installment of the Tales of Monkey Island story, so I wont take up much of your time. If you haven’t checked out the first two chapters yet, you can scope my recent review. If you have played the first two, then you already know pretty much what to expect, but this episode does have a few surprises in store.

Guybrush communicates with a giant manatee

The most noticeable thing about this chapter is that the puzzles are a little less clever, and a little more monotonous. One of the puzzles, for example, is purely a trial-and-error exercise, while another forces you to fail at least twice before it is possible to succeed.

You might also notice that the failure mechanic of the series becomes a little stretched in this one. In the fist two chapters, most of the puzzles dealt with physical objects or supernatural forces–no matter what it somehow made sense that Guybrush was allowed to retry over and over again–but when he would deal directly with other people, it would rely on them being remarkably stupid. The gimmick relies on the fact that  they are able to fall for the same gag over and over infinitely in order to make it possible for Guybrush to try again as much as we wants.

In this new chapter, almost all of the puzzles deal directly with other characters, either by asking you to do something for them, or threatening you with violence if you don’t. They are not stupid characters, so it simply doesn’t make sense that they allow Guybrush to fail over and over without consequence. I still like the failure mechanics, but I don’t think that the writers did as good a job making it make sense within context this time.

LeFay is one of the more interesting characters in the story.

I like where the plot is going, and the characterizations are very good. Despite the comedic overlay, the characters are deep and intriguing. LeFay is especially interesting, and I look forward to seeing where the story takes her.

The episode is fun to play, but all-in-all, it is not quite as entertaining as the first two. Any episodic game is bound to have at least one episode that’s not quite as good, however. As long as the next episodes pick up the slack, this is still a great game, which I would recommend to any adventure game fan.