Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay (WiiWare) Review
These Tales of Monkey Island episodes are truly spoiling us. We waited years for a new game in the series, and now in just under a month we get our hands on another jaunt. Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay is the second episode in the new series and begins literally straight after the first episode aboard the Screaming Narwhal with a sword to his throat. With Guybrush having escaped the winds of Flotsam Island, he’s now after the La Esponja Grande to rid the Caribbean of the LeChuck pox and save Elaine (again). Thankfully, Elaine is found rather quickly; unfortunately, she and most of the pirates in the game now have the pox. Whereas the first episode had you staying in one island and moving around that, Spinner Cay has you cruising around thanks to the Narwhal with many islands to visit. Some of them have nothing on them (yet) and others are rather large – the main two being Spinner Cay and Spoon Island. By the end of the game you’ll have explored and used each of the islands multiple times, with return trips to most of them necessary.
Even with the adventure spread over many islands, the game still manages to feel smaller. Perhaps this is because each of the islands is really small (bar two) – but there is still plenty to look at. The island with the manatee on the wall, while mostly useless to the story, contains a cute Easter egg. Thankfully, there is no crazy maze of a jungle to get through this time; there is a jungle, but it’s nowhere near confusing as it was in the first game. This, and the smaller amount of places to try things, makes the game feel shorter. It’s still a good 3 or 4 hours, which is what we expected, but you’ll come back from it feeling, “Oh, that’s it?”
One of our complaints of the first episode was the lack of any really memorable characters outside De Singe. This time, however, there are a few new characters that are memorable and funny. Characters who got the short end of the story stick get expanded on, too. Morgan La Flay, a sexy pirate bounty hunter, just happens to be one of the biggest fans of Guybrush – but that doesn’t matter as she has a job to do and promptly cuts off Guybrush’s pox infected hand. Yep, that’s right, Guybrush gets a nice big hook for this episode and maybe onwards. The Merfolk who live under Spinner Cay are less memorable though, but they (as with the other character) are this time around all written well. Winslow, the first mate upon the Screaming Narwhal, also gets fleshed out – apparently he has a map fetish. Fan service this time around is more hidden, however that’s not a bad thing, as there is a bunch of new jokes which lets the game stand on its own. The writing for this episode is much better than the first; however, the more interesting characters might have something to do with it. Even though it has a shorter length, Elaine and human form LeChuck have perhaps their biggest parts yet of any of the Monkey Island games before it. It’s refreshing to see Elaine not kidnapped and downright freaky to see LeChuck (who with his pox removed) helping Guybrush. The newly well mannered pirate is now also a bit dumb, and Guybrush lends a hand against his better judgement.
The game’s controls are as they were before, as are the graphics and sound. The script for the game delivers plenty of laughs and the animation of the characters again doesn’t disappoint. The locations keep that Caribbean flavour with all new places to visit, and none of the previous locations from the first episode return. The first episode on Wii suffered from a terrible frame rate and compressed sound; while Telltale might not be able to do anything about the sound due to the limit on size of games on the WiiWare service, we do hope the framerate will be fixed as the game looks bright, colourful, and beautiful in places.
By the end of the game, you’ll have come across a bunch of great new characters and locations, but, as this is only the second episode, you can’t help feel a bit let down that nothing is really resolved by the end of it. That’s not to say the end isn’t great; like the first episode, Telltale have left us with another cliff hanger.
The Siege of Spinner Cay is another great addition to the Tales of Monkey Island series and Monkey Island history. It’s full of witty, new humour, while also providing enough fan service for those nostalgic people. One of the main problems from the first game, the lack of memorable cast members, has also been fixed with new and interesting characters; old characters have also been given more back story and personality. The game is a little shorter than the first episode by our count, but packed with less time wasters. We just hope that by the time the game reaches the Wii it’ll have the frame rate fixed. Bring on episode three!
Note: We reviewed Tales of Monkey Island on the PC, but, as before with other Telltale games, they have been mostly identical on the Wii. Due to the issues the first game had with its frame rate, we’ll re-examine the review later on if need be, but the game is still enjoyable as is.
