Escape From Monkey Island (PS2)

Obviously, yes. It's fair to say that LucasArts have dominated the adventure game market for the last...ooh...eleven years? Their hilarious games have had millions rolling on the floor in hysterics for years now. On the PC. This is the first 'Monkey' game confined to console, and it works very well. The graphics are in functional 3D- not as good as the BRILLIANT cartoon graphics of Curse of Monkey Island, but good nevertheless. Guybrush is still played by the superb Dominic Armato ("Iron Maiden! Excellllent!) and the Monkey Island humour has never died. With brilliant overly-sinister Australians, monkeys (More than you can shake a voodoo doll at, apparantly) and loads of knowing in-jokes to the first three games, this is a hearty dose of refreshment to a console where you either (a) drive very fast and very dangerously OR (b) butcher things. The replacement of Ron Gilbert (Monkeys 1 + 2) by Max Stemmle and Sam Clark (Sam and Max hit the road) really hasn't harmed the series, and restaurants such as "PLANET THREEPWOOD" and "STARBUCCANEERS" takes the Monkey Island series into the 21st century with a bang. It's a hard game, too, harder than any others. This will last you. If you don't spoil it with a walkthrough (For your sake, don't..) then you'll get at least 30 hours out of this.

A word of advice, though- play the first three games beforehand (You can get them in a boxset...), or you will NOT get some of the humour.

Now if only I could combine the prosthetic feet with the duck...

So what do you need to know if you are thinking of buying this game? First, if you don't know anything about it, then its a click and point type adventure game. Yawn.

Dont run off yet - even if you aren't a great fan, you should at least check out MI, which is probably one of the strongest in its class. It manages this by its off-the-wall humour, and attention to detail.

Unlike 'Brand X', here you get a much deeper level of interaction, which in turn gives you much more reason to want to keep trying - how else are you ever going to figure out that the artificial skin goes on the open manhole?

And thats probably where MI has always failed, there can sometimes be such a complete lack of logic between what you are trying to achieve and what items you have to hand that frustration can soon set in. It's only the fun of finding out what Elaine will say when you try poking her with your sword (ahem) that keeps you going sometimes.

The latest MI does keep the spirit of the previous games going, and although its gonna help to have played the previous games (you'll get much more of the in jokes!) its not the end of the world if you haven't.

That's about all I can tell you about the game without decending into Monkeyisms and confusing the hell out of all you non-MI players.

If you don't know anything about MI, I'd suggest hiring it out for a couple of days (if you can) before you even think of buying it - if you dont get the humour, this will be a huge dissapointment.

If you're a fan, why are you even bothering reading this? Get to the shops now and part with your hard earned cash (you know its the only way).