With “Lair of the Leviathan” being the third chapter out of five in the new Monkey Island series created by Telltale games, Tales of Monkey Island, I think it’s fair to say that the quality of this chapter is really pivotal for your enjoyment of the game.
As usual, you play Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate and adventurer. Having accidentally drained the voodoo out of his enemy LeChuck (who has now become good) he has accidentally released a pox upon the Caribbean, and it is up to him to find La Esponge Grande, a magical sea sponge to soak up the voodoo, whilst being chased by a scientist and pirate hunter, desperate to get their hands on the pox.
The basic story really isn’t bad, it’s interesting enough. However, after spending chapter two with mermaids (whether they fit into the Monkey Island series is questionable) we now find Guybrush inside the stomach of a Giant Manatee. The basic story isn’t bad, but the deeper it goes, the more problems you find, because straight away this series is starting to feel more Pirates of the Caribbean than Monkey Island. Or maybe a children’s cartoon, because roaming about inside the stomach of a manatee just doesn’t feel right. In a genre that relies on story telling it’s a pretty big negative right from the start.
And the problems don’t end there. Obviously with the story taking us inside the stomach of a manatee, the environment is obviously inside the stomach of a manatee. Firstly, it feels claustrophobic because the environment isn’t big and doesn’t feel big. Most of the time you’ll be roaming around the tiny environment of the stomach, which three residents have converted into a hangout, with a bar. Even ignoring the opinion that this just doesn’t feel like a Monkey Island environment, it’s still bad because there is nothing to do. An adventure game needs more exploration than this, and needs more interesting environments than this. There’s very little to do and no nice scenery and it makes even the small environments of the previous games feel large. Due to the small environments there seems to be less object-puzzles and more dialogue based puzzles, which feels a tad over-done, though I’ll get to that later, because with the environment comes one more bad thing, characters.

Telltale has had a problem with characters in this series. The first chapter gave us a glass blower, a journalist and a doll collector. The second chapter gave us the most stereotypically dull pirates, and mermaids that lacked personality. There were complaints that the characters were not good enough and that most of the characters looked the same. So Telltale did something about this…so now the new characters have new character models. Personally, I’d have just preferred better characters because Telltale have given us a stereotypical surfer (who, just because he wasn’t annoying enough before, has a friend in the form of a lifeless skeleton), a geek and their leader, the (again stereotypical) tough guy. It’s rather a surprise really due to the previous game (Escape from Monkey Island) receiving a large amount of criticism for not being piratey enough. It feels like the characters were made for another game and have just been ported over with no thought because they have no place in a Monkey Island game. They’re dull and provide no humour, giving this chapter the worst set of new characters yet which is a shame, because at least chapter two gave us the character Morgan Le Flay, pirate hunter, who thankfully appears in this one also.
Morgan is pretty much the only good new character of Tales so far and Telltale has given her a charm that Monkey Island characters need. It’s a shame that Telltale don’t appear to be able to develop her character with her conflicting ideas (both being a fan of Guybrush and needing to kill him) and instead just switch her personalities sporadically, but she is decent at least. Telltale at least does a good job with the existing characters of the series. Guybrush is as good as ever, perhaps even more loveable with the delightful facial expressions Telltale has given him, and Murray makes a return in this chapter, which fans have been looking forward to. He is used well and is humorous enough, though perhaps overstayed his welcome a little.
Thankfully LeChuck and Elaine are hardly in this chapter, which is brilliant because the constant hints of a relationship forming between the two is just a terrible idea and it is nice to get a break from them at least.

Now onto the puzzles. With the small environments I have already mentioned that a lot of them are dialogue based and you start with a puzzle where you must convince a character that Morgan is your wife. It doesn’t start the chapter with a bang in the same way the sword fighting puzzle did at the start of the second chapter but it is decent enough, and it’s obvious that Telltale are trying to find ways to fill the gap of Insult sword fighting, which won’t be appearing in the series. It worked overall, though I do wish they’d just stick to the sword fighting of chapter two because after this dialogue-based puzzle, there are more, and not as good.
First off there is the “face off”. More pointless than insult arm-wrestling (another complaint in Escape from Monkey Island) you must earn the trust of the three residents of the stomach by defeating their leader Bugeye (yes…that’s his name) in a “face off”. You must learn ‘funny’ facial positions in order to beat the leader. Which just brings me back to the idea that this isn’t Monkey Island but becoming some sort of children’s cartoon because it’s not piratey, and certainly has no place in a series where the original fan base has passed their eighth birthday. And unfortunately that takes up a fair amount of game time really.
After the abomination that is the face off you have some more dialogue puzzles though. First you must convince Morgan to date the geek of the group by convincing her you are sending her on a recon mission. It’s boring, I’m not playing blind date and to an extent it harms Morgan’s character because she’s meant to be smart. It just leads to a muddle of puzzles. There is one final dialogue based puzzle nearer the end of the game though I’ll stay vague on that since it is a bit of a minor spoiler. Again, it’s not good.
It isn’t all negative of course; some of the puzzles are good. There’s a great puzzle that involves getting out of a cage and Murray is used in a decent puzzle (which is brilliant because it gives him a point in the game) though the puzzles just fall short overall. Too many puzzles rely on dialogue and the ones that don’t aren’t the best overall. One puzzle was letdown by the clarity of a certain action of a character,

So, overall, I’d say it’s the worst chapter of the series. By quite a bit as well. Whereas the other chapters were decent despite my fears of where the story was going, at least they were only fears. This chapter was doomed from the second I realised my time would be spent inside a giant manatee, and was just made worse by the overall puzzle of having to fix the manatees inner-ear to give him direction (smart yes, but not piratey). The awful characters and environment, and the dialogue based puzzles just pile up the already long list of complaints in this series and with yet another cliff hanger ending I can’t help but lose my enthusiasm for this series. Outside of the manatee and into the fresh air I have hope for the fourth chapter though looking at the overall game, this is a chapter they’ll struggle to recover from.

I will end on a positive however. The humour is generally there. It is dampened by the awful characters that pollute the chapter though it’s still there and some of the lines are brilliant. Guybrush is as good as ever, Murray is brilliant and Morgan is a great character, and all provide a decent amount of humour between them which does partially save this episode purely because although the adventure genre relies on story telling, Monkey Island in general relies on humour, and that is one thing at least that Telltale has got right.

The interface of course is decent, as are the graphics. The graphics of course aren’t brilliant, and the system requirements for the game are low, but they do the job in creating a decent looking environment (provided you’re not in a manatee) that is nice and cartoony and though the mouse controls are awkward a combination of keyboard and mouse controls means the control of the character is fine.

Tales of Monkey Island can be purchased from Telltale for $35 and are released on a monthly basis (thereabout). It is also available on the Wii.