Hey everyone, PushingUpRoses here and today
I’m going to be taking a look at Escape from Monkey Island, the 4th and last game
in the Monkey Island series that was developed by LucasArts. I have fond memories of playing this game
in my teens; it was released in 2000 for PC and in 2001 on the PS2, and I was at an age
where I could really digest the story and understand the mechanics of an adventure game. I remember going to Best Buy and seeing the
box on the shelf; I had already played and enjoyed its predecessor, The Curse of Monkey
Island, and because adventure games had all but died by 2000, I was pleasantly surprised
to see one, especially another Monkey Island. I remember spending all day trying to figure
out these puzzles, enjoying the game’s atmosphere and settings, and being charmed by the humor;
the memories of playing it are pretty burned into my brain because I had just gotten braces
and I would always be late to my orthodontist appointments due to wanting to stay home to
play this. I had also just gotten kicked out of public
school and started at an alternative school, and I would play this game as a distraction
from the unpleasantness of those days. Even though I had played it many times and
own the CDs, I always found the game tricky to run on modern machines; not long ago I
tried running it in a program called ResidualVM, which can be used to play games that run on
the GrimE engine, but found it was glitchy and not running smoothly, so it had been years
since I committed to a full playthrough. When it was released on GOG not long ago,
I found that I still enjoy it; memories of my weird orthodontist who liked to talk about
Terry Pratchett and kids getting into weird fights over cigarettes at alternative school
came flooding back into my brain, and I thought “You know. This game is better than people remember.” It currently has the reputation for being
the weakest in the Monkey Island series, which might be true, but I feel like when you hear
someone say that it automatically leaves this negative impression, as though it must also
be a bad game. You hear the word weak and you don’t think,
“Ah yes, but surely it’s still a good game on its own!” But I think this is a very nice looking, funny,
and enjoyable Monkey Island title, so I am here to defend this game in all of its 3D
glory, while also touching on the reasons why people think it’s lackluster. Including “Monkeeeey Kombat!” Yeah,I know. I’ll get to it later. As you probably know, the original creators
of Monkey Island were no longer involved with the series after the second game. Curse of Monkey Island, which is a personal
favorite of mine, was designed by Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern, who previously worked
on Full Throttle. The project leads changed again for Escape
from Monkey Island; it was designed by Sean Clark and Michael Stemmle, also members of
the LucasArts team; they had previously worked on Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis,
and Sam and Max Hit the Road. Despite the Monkey Island games having different
designers and artists for each title, they all seem to have that classic LucasArts humor
and charm because everyone who worked on them still came from the LucasArts family. The biggest difference between this game and
the others is, as you’ve probably noticed, the artstyle. We’ve gone from more of a 2D, cartoony style
to….threeeee deeeeeee… But before I hop on my soapbox and get all
preachy about the graphics and mechanics, let’s take a look at the story. You play as main character, Guybrush Threepwood,
and the goal is no longer to be a mighty pirate. You’ve achieved that, and have even married
the plunder bunny of your dreams, Elaine Marley. It picks up where the previous game left off;
after marrying, Guybrush and Elaine go on their honeymoon. On the way back they get pillaged by some
stocky looking pirates, and that is how the game starts. After defeating them with a jaunty looking
jig, you resume life on Melee island as the beleaguered husband of your strong witted
governor wife. Unfortunately, you were gone a tad bit too
long and Elaine was declared dead, opening up a space for a new governor. In the running is the suspiciously named Charles
L. Charles, whose goal is to win the favor of the island’s pirates so he can promptly
exterminate all of them. There is also a brand new villian named Ozzie
Mandrill, and this game really, really wants to let you know that he is Australian. Ozzie is a weird antagonist to bring into
the plot; he’s evil, but not in a supernatural way like LeChuck was in previous games; he
simply just does not like pirates and wants to turn the islands into consumer tourist
traps to make money, and apparently he is so good at insult fighting, a practice in
the lore that started way back in The Secret of Monkey Island, that all of the pirates
have lost their jobs and houses to him. It’s weird that there’s some kind of capitalist
vampire narrative for this game, but it works for the most part. Huh, this villain seems kind of familiar to
me, can’t quite place my finger on it, huh. Elaine sends us on a trip to Lucre Island,
where we have to discuss what happened with the family lawyers. They point us to the bank where our family
heirlooms are, and while trying to pick them up, it gets robbed by another pirate wearing
a guybrush mask. From here on out we need to prove our innocence,
figure out what Ozzie Mandrill’s motives are, and win back Elaine’s rightful position
of Governor from Charles L. Charles. The
best parts of this game feature the wonderful voice acting; most of the actors were previously
in The Curse of Monkey island, though it IS unfortunate that Elaine was given a new voice
actress; it’s even a little jarring considering Elaine went from having a distinct accent,
to no accent at all. Stan also has a new voice actor, but everyone
else is familiar, like Dominic Armato as Guybrush, Earl Boen as Zombie Ghost Pirate LeChuck,
and Leilani Jones Wilmore as the VooDoo lady. And this is a fantastic segue to discussing
what makes this game really enjoyable; LucasArts has always had the upper hand when it came
to voice acting; their main competitor, Sierra, always kind of lagged when it came to this. Good lord. Everyone is very convincing in their roles,
I barely even see the characters as 3D animated models, but rather actual people who are experiencing
real situations in the game. On top of that, it’s funny. I don’t think it’s quite as good as Grim
Fandango in terms of humor and use of dialogue trees, but you can tell that the writing,
even with the weird storyline going on, is in the spirit of Monkey Island. I think I just killed that man. Hm. Now let’s talk about (monkeeeeey kombat!) Not yet, I’m getting there. Let’s observe the 3D graphics. I’m going to defend them. Look, 3D was not exactly the hotness at this
point in time when it came to adventure games. 3D + Adventure Games = DISASTER. It became very unpopular very fast, much like
me right before I got kicked out of high school. But look at this game, LOOK AT IT. BE HONEST WITH YOURSELVES, this game does
not look bad. In fact, I think it looks...pleasant. I love these swirly clouds. Like, a lot. I like them a lot. When I streamed this game a couple weeks ago
I couldn’t really get past the swirly clouds thing, I was enamored. And the cutscenes are really not that bad;
the characters have expressions, their movements are not poorly done; I really do think it’s
fine. And the reason it looks better than other
attempts at 3D adventure games is the fact that the design team made the very wise decision
of keeping things cartoony; obviously not as cartoony as Curse of Monkey Island, but
cartoony enough to where certain things can be forgiven. I like the characters’ walk cycles, I like
the attention to detail with their clothing and hair; it’s not like, oh...say...Gabriel
Knight 3, released just a year earlier, where they tried to go for...uh...realistic faces
and bodies? Seriously though, what is this? This is just bad, no wonder people were so
turned off. What the fuck is this??? I love the settings, some are more lively
than others of course, but overall I found everything very easy to look at. I especially like the first couple islands
you visit, melee and lucre. Very fun to explore. The puzzle design is about on par with the
first couple of games; I’m excluding Curse because I thought that game was superior and
had smarter inventory object puzzles than the others, so when I say it’s on par with
the first two games what I am trying to say is that I thought it was on the harder side. Apparently I had no issues expressing my opinion
on this in my stream. Though I do recall beating the game without
a guide when I was young, so it couldn’t have been too hard. The game is segmented, so there are only so
many things you can do in one location before moving onto the next; very little backtracking,
but some of these puzzles seem pointlessly frustrating. Speaking of inventory, would you like to meet
Jeff? I made him. He’s my very own abomination of nature. I made him out of prosthetics. Jeff is useless and doesn’t do anything
in the game, but when I was young I thought I absolutely HAD to create this poor lost
soul and eventually use him for something. I mean, you can get ONE use out of him. There’s a puzzle in this game that involves
getting a skin prosthetic to stretch over a manhole so you can use it as a trampoline…
wow, only in adventure games, right? To get this item you have to find three names,
which are random each time, on the inside of the manhole. You use these names in a mad-lib type of dialogue
tree puzzle; if you use the correct names in the story, you get the skin. If you do random names, you get all of these
random body parts, and I figured as long as they were inventory items and LucasArts, being
such pioneers of puzzles that don’t spit out superfluous items, that I would need them. When I collected enough, I constructed Jeff. This was very tedious, time consuming, and
pointless, but I don’t regret it. Everyone needs love. And a liver. And a stomach. And a butt. A big ole butt. There’s also this. Guybrush glued himself to this mechanical
manatee and rode it for two hours straight. You know, I always wondered what Elaine saw
in guybrush and now it’s very clear. So obviously, I have a lot of positive things
to say about this game. I genuinely think it is good. But if it is as good as I say it is, then
why do people view it as weak? Whenever I read reviews on this game they
are usually prompted with some sort of defense, as though people have to acknowledge that
this isn’t the best game but they still enjoy it do to nostalgia, or something akin
to that. One of the most interesting things about this
game is the fact that it was received pretty well; in fact nearly all of the reviews for
it were positive, even praising it for being a fresh addition to the slowly dying adventure
game genre. It probably helped that it had zero competition
at the time, but still; it was well liked. The criticisms were mostly about the horrid,
awful, NO GOOD tank controls, which I cannot for the life of me figure out why the developers
did this, and of course…(monkeeeeeey kombat!) It seems like all of the Monkey Islands have
something holding them back from being the perfect games; insult sword fighting was met
with mixed reviews, and when it was expanded on in the third game, it was liked even less. Monkey Kombat seems to be the new style of
insult sword fighting, only it is way less fun, takes up way too much time, is annoying,
is not fun, involves making monkey noises, is tedious, is frustrating to learn, and did
I mention NOT FUN? I know you’re hear to listen to me defend
this game, but there’s really no defense for Monkey Kombat. In this section of the game, you have to fight
these innocent little monkeys with an array of grunts and groans. No insults, just...monkey sounds. To win, you have to learn which moves beat
which and how to switch to those moves using ooks and eeps, which you input with your arrow
keys. Don’t even think about using a walkthrough;
the commands are randomized, so your best bet is to write all this shit down. This makes up for a majority of the end of
the game, which jumps over damn near every shark in the ocean, not just because of the
Monkey Kombat but because the story splits off from the group and does its own thing. Even more so than the feeble attempt at a
Mortal Kombat parody, how the story concludes is where the game starts to suffer. Usually I don’t give a spoiler warning for
older games like this, especially in a retrospective, but I’m going to for this one just in case
you want to experience this jarring madness all for yourself, so if you wanna skip this,
head on to the time stamp on the screen. We good? Okay, in a callback to The Secret of Monkey
Island, we find ourselves once again marooned on Monkey Island.. While we are here we need to figure out a
way to beat the Ultimate Insult, a magical voodoo curse Ozzie Mandrill plans to use to
eradicate all of the pirates so he can use the island for his weird touristy money making
schemes. We also learn that Ozzie and LeChuck are working
together because Ozzie saved him from a certain doom, no idea how but apparently he pulled
LeChuck out of the ice we buried him with in the last game. LeChuck’s intentions remain the same, he
still just wants to marry Elaine. We find good old Herman Toothrot still stranded
on Monkey Island, only this time he plays a different role. He is in fact, NOT Herman Toothrot. He’s actually ELAINE MARLEY’S GRANDFATHER. So he, with the help of a talking monkey named
Jojo, help us make a bigger, better ultimate insult out of the giant monkey head. Surprise, there was actually a monkey GUNDAM
underneath this thing. To fight us, LeChuck turns himself into a
giant statue, Ozzie takes control of him, and then we have to literally not fight and
give up to win. Yes, we have to cause a draw three times in
a row during Monkey Kombat until LeChuck gets tired of it, because the best way to cure
a voodoo curse is laziness. After LeChuck loses, he regains control of
himself and squashes Ozzie in a rather graphic death scene, then he EXPLODES!!! What in the fuuuuuck? I have so many questions. How did LeChuck regain control? Why didn’t they just kill guybrush right
off the bat? Why did he combust??? Why the Grandpa Marley stuff? There’s also a minor subplot with LeChuck
disguising himself as Charles L Charles and getting voted in as governor and I don’t
understand WHY; It’s so convoluted that it’s rather hard to explain, which is the
first sign of a bad plot; if you can’t describe it to someone rather concisely, you may want
to reconsider the story. I’m not sure I can even pin down the main
plot; it’s more like a lot of subplots that don’t quite add up to a main idea. I also want to add that I never liked the
Monkey Island parts of the first game either, so I am not sure why the writers went that
route for this one. Strange that the worst parts of the Monkey
Island games seem to be when you’re on the game’s namesake. In the game’s defense, I adored the first
three quarters; it’s really the final act that throws it all off. Not that adventure games have a great track
record for iconic endings or anything, they definitely don’t, but this one just kind
of...gives up. It just seems like nobody knew what to do
with it, so they threw LeChuck in there in the form of a giant statue and now it’s
just a game of giant rockem sockem robots for no reason. I also never liked the addition of another
antagonist; Ozzie Mandrill just doesn’t seem to fit the tone of Monkey Island; he’s
not a bad villain, I’m just not sure he’s in the right game. I do admire the writers for trying something
new, because let’s be honest; how many times do you want to see Guybrush Versus LeChuck? I know you’re probably aggressively nodding
your head, saying “Me, I totally wanna see the same thing over and over again!” and
no, do you WANT this game to suffer from Nickelback syndrome? They release the same damn song over and over
again with slightly different lyrics and now people hate them. You don’t want the same shit. No one wants the same shit. I do not want my entertainment to be infested
by Nickelback syndrome. That being said, I do think the inclusion
of Ozzie Mandrill, though something new, strayed a little bit too far from a Monkey Island
lore and didn’t quite fit thematically. Like Nickelback. They don’t fit anywhere. I also think people are very quick to judge
3D animation from the late 90s and early 2000s, and I don’t blame you. I do feel like there is some blind judgement
there, probably due to the fact that there were so many ugly games using this style,
and over time we’ve come to realize just how ugly those games were, but I think it’s
unfair to throw Escape into the mix because LOOK AT THESE DAMN CLOUDS I LOVE THEM- But the biggest reason people don’t favor
this game is because the previous three are just...better. When you have a series of anything, whether
that be movies, music, or in this case, video games, SOMETHING in that series is going to
be crowned the worst by comparison, that’s just how it goes. But it is of my personal opinion that Escape
from Monkey island, though outshined by the previous games, is not a bad game. I think it has a lot of fun moments, a lot
of quality design, and even with (monkeeeeeeeeey kombat!), I liked it. Something I always liked about LucasArts is
that even their less favored games maintained a certain level of quality and appeal, something
I definitely cannot say about every developer. When a Sierra game isn’t great, it topples
into absurdly bad territory. When a LucasArts game isn’t great, it still
manages to be pretty decent. And if you still can’t find anything to
like about this game or you think my praises are just some bullshit powered by flowery
childhood nostalgia, then I just have one thing to say: How appropriate, you fight like
a cow. Yeah. Like a fuckin’ bovine. Also, here’s some Murray. I know it’s what you’re all here for it
anyway. Roll the clip. Hey everyone, thanks for watching my Escape
from Monkey Island retrospective. Remember, never pay more than 20 bucks for
a computer game. Unless you want to buy one for me, in that
case please consider becoming a patron and supporting my channel! All of the details are in the description,
and as always, I’ll see you in the next one.
