The Siege of Spinner Cay

by Shadow Wave

© 2009 Ben Cadwallader

• SPOILER WARNING: Contains Chapter 1 Spoilers

Chapter 2 of the episodic Tales Of Monkey Island PC point ‘n click game takes a small downhill tumble but remains very enjoyable.

Guybrush Threepwoods newest epic adventure continues exactly where chapter 1 left you hanging, and this time Guybrush is forced to travel to Spinner Cay, the islands of the Mer-people (think mermaids), to repair his ship’s now damaged mast.

This leads him to bump into his love, Elaine and maybe a few other old friends as well. Upon meeting Elaine, Guybrush is given the task of finding the 3 golden relics that need to be used to find La Esponge Grande, which is needed to save the Caribbean from the Pox of Lechuck.

• Monkey Island Siege of Spinner Cay

Guybrush’s quest to find the 3 relics in Chapter 2 is much simpler, easier and less confusing compared to episode 1. With less areas to explore, less people to talk to, and a few copy and paste areas I think most people will figure out what needs to be done pretty quickly.

You can explore the Mer-people city, Spinner Cay, which has a grand total of 3 inhabitants to talk to and not many places to explore. There are a few very small islands, most which serve no purpose (yet?).

Lots of exploring to do

Most of your time will be spent exploring another jungle filled island.

This jungle though, looks extremely similar to the jungle you had to explore in chapter 1 but without all the ‘choose the right path’ puzzles. This does make trekking through the jungle a bit more pleasant as you will remember how to get around much easier.

I found the humour to be much more hilarious this time around compared to Chapter 1, with lots of witty remarks which seemed to tie in better, and there are A LOT of funny moments that only fans of the earlier games will appreciate.

I think the main let down in this chapter is that the islands do not change essentially during the whole game (with an exception for a brief moment at the end). In chapter 1, the town of Flotsam Island had new characters appear when you were through various sections of the game and the island slowly changed due to the Pox spreading over the island. It gave you a sense of progression and while Chapter 2 does do this to some degree, it just doesn’t pull it off as well.

I also can see a potential problem with the re-use of character models. Your ship mate, Mr Windslow looks very similar to a pirate on the island, who also looks very similar to the reporter from Chapter 1.

I just hope that this trend doesn’t continue.

The presentation, controls, and hint system are just the same as chapter 1 and I doubt they will be changing at all. Sadly it would have been really nice in this chapter to have some water effects since Guybrush is dealing with water people.

There are many times there should have been some kind of splash and there was nothing and it just looks a little too wrong. We’ve been having splashing effects since the Super Nintendo and it would have been nice to have even just a little something to actually demonstrate fluidity in the fluid….

I might sound like I’m full of criticism and have no love for this chapter of Tales of Monkey Island, but I did enjoy it a lot. It has great humour, the puzzles are fun, the story starts to come together, and overall it was a good game. It’s just that when compared to Chapter 1 it falls short.

Would OXCGN Steal this for the 360?

Steal it? Maybe

© 2009 Ben Cadwallader

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