Escape from Monkey Island

                   Played by Peter Clark

This is, I think, the fourth game in the Monkey Island series and,
on one computer or another, I have managed to work my way through
all of them. Is this the best so far? Well, I think so.  The
humour over the years has had the rough edges worn from it and I
found that there were several occasions where I laughed out loud
at the responses from the screen characters.

Again you play the game as Guybrush Threepwood. At the end of the
last game you were married to the lovely Elaine and this game
begins as you return from an extended honeymoon.  Elaine is the
Governor of Melee Island and it seems that plans are afoot to take
that position away from her at the next election. At the start of
the game you find yourself tied to the mast of the ship while your
wife fights off the attacking pirates.  Your first task is to free
yourself and save the day. Having done this, you find yourself on
Melee Island and the game proper begins. As you arrive, you find
that the Governor's Mansion is under siege from a pirate with a
stone-throwing machine. You will have to go to the town and find
the necessary items to remove him and get into the Mansion. On
entering the Mansion, you find Elaine who requests that you visit
Lucre Island to see her solicitors. The only problem is that you
have no ship or crew. Ok, it's back to the town and the Harbour to
sort things out then, off to Lucre Island.

On arrival at Lucre Island, there are several tasks to perform.
Firstly, of course, there is the visit to the solicitors, then the
bank. Here you get caught up in a bank robbery and are locked into
the vault. After finding your way out, you will be under suspicion
and will be placed under house arrest. You have the huge problem
of proving your innocence before being allowed to leave the
island. Lots of problems here including a swamp where you have to
use a chess clock to navigate a raft.  During this sequence you
come face to face with yourself a couple of times!

After many adventures on Lucre Island, and assuming that you have
managed to prove your innocence, you will be able to return to
Melee Island and Elaine. It is at this point in the game that you
discover that Elaine's opponent in the election is none other than
Le Chuck in disguise. He seems to have returned from the dead.
Your task in this section is to collect some of the family
heirlooms and your first port of call is to the Voodoo Lady. She
can supply most of what you need but there is still something
missing. The Voodoo Lady tells you that what you need is somewhere
on the island. When you have discovered the fourth item you are
able to use them all on your ship. If you have played any of the
previous games in the series, you will know all about insults.
However, the insult to end all insults is your final quest. This
is referred to as the Ultimate Insult.

Your quest now takes you to Jumbalaya Island. This is a theme park
island done up to attract visitors to the pirate environment.
There are very many parts to your quest on this island involving a
mechanical manatee and a time-share salesman to mention but two.
While on this island, you have to take part in and win a diving
competition. You will also have to find a rowing boat and go to
Knuttin' Atoll where you have to go back to school. You also have
to talk a couple of parrots into helping you to find part of the
Ultimate Insult. One of them tells lies and, to begin with you
don't know which is which as they are identical.

From here you will be returned to Melee Island and have the last
part of the Ultimate Insult stolen from you. You will also be
transported to Monkey Island and will have to find some way of
escaping and finding your way back to Melee Island and Elaine.
There are a couple of puzzles in this section that seemed to take
forever to solve. The first, and the easier of the two involves
you dropping cannon balls into tunnels at the right time and in
the right order to block up a lava stream. The second is the one
that almost had me giving up the whole game. Again I refer to the
previous games in the series that involved trading insults with
your opponents. This has been done away with in the current game
but Monkey Kombat has been brought in to take its place. It is
based on the "Paper, scissors, string" children's game only here
there are several different positions that Guybrush can adopt.
Each one of these will beat two other positions but you are not
told which. You have to work it out for yourself and, to make
matters worse, it is random with each game so there is no point in
trying to look at a previous solution. Your opponents in this game
are monkeys and, when you are able to beat the little ones, you
will feel able to go and tackle the Boss Monkey, Jojo. You may be
better at working out sequences and codes than I am but this part
of the game took me several hours over three days and I was
heartily sick of monkeys by the time I had finished. I believe
that I had to beat five or six small moneys before I was able to
go on to fight Jojo. All this to acquire a bronze hat!

You are nearly at the end of the game now, all there is left is
the giant monkey head building to enter and the towers to climb
before you find yourself back at Melee Island with Elaine.  The
final showdown is with a large statue of Le Chuck and you will
have to beat him in the same way as you did Jojo. This is,
however, not such a long drawn out procedure, as you only have to
beat him once. You are now treated to the final video sequence.

This may seem a long review but it is a long game and I have still
missed out a huge amount of the game-play and humour.  If you
haven't already played this game then I would suggest that you go
out immediately and buy it. Apart from the Monkey Kombat that I
think was a little overdone, I cannot find fault with it at all.
Control is via the keyboard, not the mouse and although feeling
strange at first, I soon became used to it. I found no bugs and
the game ran perfectly on a Pentium 3, 700 Mhz. under Windows
(Me).












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