Mini-review of Escape from Monkey Island

Introduction:

	Escape from Monkey Island is the fourth game in the MI
	series, so perhaps one shouldn't be surprised to see a fair
	amount of "theft" from the previous games.  I started the
	game with no real expectations, and as a result was
	pleasantly surprised.  Lucas Arts has managed to produce a
	game that I found to be fun to play (with very few quibbles).

Graphics (quality, animations, cut scenes):

	EMI is a visual treat from beginning to end.  The artists
	have managed to capture the tropical island atmosphere and
	"feel" that was so wonderful in the first Monkey Island game;
	I don't know how they did it, but I am not complaining.

Sound (music, voices, special effects)

	I don't usually notice the music in a game unless it is very
	good or very bad.  I noticed the music in MI4, and liked it
	very much.  Caribbean in flavour, and supported the story
	throughout.

	The voice acting was top notch throughout.  Some of the
	voices took a bit of getting used to, but the acting was so
	good that I have to applaud.

	Now, for the best part of the game; the cut scenes.  They
	took these fairly crude 3D characters and brought them alive.
	The cut scenes are some of the best I have ever seen;
	characters are brought to life on the screen right before
	your eyes.

Story (plot, theme, depth):

	The story is a bit silly and contrived, but for a
	cartoon-syle game, it seemed to fit.  In many respects, it
	was the usual adventure game plot -- character must do
	something trivial which quickly turns into a quest to "SAVE
	THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT".  Oh well, it's tough to create an
	adventure game which isn't quest-based in some manner, and
	saving the world is obviously enough motivation for even the
	most blase gamer.

	EMI contained much of the same humour as the other games in
	the series, with a large dollop of self-ridicule added.  It
	may have been juvenile and self-referential, but it still
	tickled my funny bone just fine, thank you.

Characters (depth, development, interaction):

	The characters were fun, and Guybrush, Elaine, and the bad
	guys were pretty well sketched in by the time the game was
	finished.  Some of the characters seemed to have been merely
	stuck in so people of previous MI games would see some old
	faces; they certainly weren't needed for the game in any real
	way.  

Puzzles (difficulty, uniqueness, suitability, ugliness, linearity):

	There are some timed sequences, as in every other Lucas Arts'
	game (grrr).  There are some puzzles where it's not obvious
	what you are supposed to do, or even why you should be doing
	anything at all.  Some puzzles didn't work well at all until
	after you had completed some other actions.  My wife and I
	had to consult a walkthrough twice, and in both cases, we
	just shrugged at the answer; there was no way we would have
	ever figured out the sequence of actions needed.  Overall,
	I would consider the difficulty of the game to be completely
	reasonable, with only a few exceptions.

	Oh, one last comment; the game seemed to saddle you with an
	amazing amount of inventory items which had no use at all.
	Some items stayed in your inventory even after you had gotten
	all possible uses from it.  It made solving some puzzles
	rather more difficult than they would have been otherwise, so
	maybe this was intentional.

Controls (user interface, save/restore, sound/video adjustments):

	First the good points.

	The inventory management system worked well, and was a
	definite improvement over the system used in Grim Fandango.
	It was quick and easy to store, retrieve, and interact with
	anything in your inventory.

	The save-game system was wonderful; to save a game, just hit
	F1, and then hit ENTER twice.  This would automatically save
	a game in an empty slot and attach a picture to it.  A nice
	touch was the ability to save a game in the middle of a
	conversation.  I save games a LOT, and there were no lack of
	slots, nor was it difficult to find a previously saved game.

	OK, here's where all the quibbles really get together into a
	big pile.  I am NOT complaining about the keyboard-only
	control system, but I must squawk about it's suitability for
	this particular game.  The keyboard control of Guybrush was
	quick "fiddly", especially in a room very densely packed with
	objects that you wanted to look at.

	I think that keyboard control worked worse in EMI than GF,
	for two reasons: scene density and camera distance.

	EMI was a very "dense" game, with many ojects you wanted to
	look at and get Guybrush's comments about.  GF was much
	"sparser", in that there were few hot spots in a room or area
	that were of interest.  When you have a bunch of hotspots in
	one view, a mouse really is a superior tool for pointing at
	all of them.  Moving your character around to look at each
	object in turn can get to be irritating, and it became really
	easy to miss some items this way.  We even missed a puzzle
	solution because of this exact issue, and needed a
	walkthrough to tell us that we had missed an object in a
	room.

	EMI also seemed to have some incredibly distant camera views
	compared to what I remember in GF.  These distant views made
	for very nice cinematic effects, but made it a real bugger to
	guide your itty-bitty character around from a distance that
	felt like miles.  I think even a mouse would be difficult in
	these cases, since the character (and locations) were so
	tiny.
	
Bugs or problems:

	The game crashed to the desktop several times, almost always
	just before starting a big cutscene.  Guybrush also froze
	completely a few times, forcing me to kill the game and restart
	from a previously saved game.

Pros:

	Great graphics -- visually stunning
	Wonderful cut scenes
	Funny (juvenile and self-referential, but still funny)
	Enjoyable story
	Great voice acting
	Good puzzles (on the whole)
	Great save game system
	Much improved inventory system (from GF)

Cons:

	Timed sequences
	A few almost impossible puzzles (for me anyway)
	Some puzzles got pretty tedious after then n'th replay
	Keyboard control could be quite finicky in places
	Inventory items with no use

Conclusion:

	In spite of some issues, I wholeheartedly recommend this
	game.  It provided that most important of all features in
	an adventure game -- it was fun to play.  It gets a spot on my
	top ten games.

Note: For those that are counting, my "top ten" now has more than ten
games on it now.  I have trouble ranking those choice games, so they
are all "top ten" for the time being.  Think of them as "games I will
play again", as opposed to "games I will sell" and "games I
will burn".