Adventure games have always been about story – solving a few puzzles, watching the occasional cutscene and so on and so forth allowing the plot to move forward. In fact, the story is a bit patchy, and at times, you can lose track of what’s actually going on. Once Guybrush hits Lucre Island, the trouble really begins, and the plot thickens.

Your first task as Guybrush (as ever) is to get together a map, a ship and a crew in order to sail to Lucre Island, seek out the Marley family lawyers and fight city hall in an attempt to be legally classified as ‘alive’. To make matters worse, an unknown pirate known as ‘Charles L Charles’ is running in the election for the new Governor. In other news, an Australian land developer has been the winner in various ‘insult games’ in which the challenged pirates lose everything they own (including their homes). On arriving back to an eerily quiet Melee Island, they are soon informed that Elaine has been pronounced dead and that the Governor’s Mansion is about to be destroyed. The SCUMM Bar – looking a little bouncier than it used to…įollowing on from where Curse of Monkey Island left off, Guybrush and Elaine return from a lengthy honeymoon sailing around the Caribbean. It’s good, but it’s not right and I think I may have figured out why (more on this later). My initial hostility has subsided, but I can’t say that I’m fully converted. Needless to say, I’ve revised my opinion. I retrieved the game from the reject bin, dusted it off and played all thirty hours of it from start to finish. So when it came to reviewing it I decided to clear away my biased views and start afresh. But in honesty, once I had learned that Gilbert didn’t design it, I merely pinned my dislike to that fact (somewhat hypocritically considering I loved the third game). I had written the game off for failing to hold my attention, and I remember being irritated by the new 3D controls. When I first got the game (a whopping eight years ago) I played through the intro and swiftly abandoned it. I have to admit to following the die-hard Ron Gilbert fans in that I was slightly apprehensive about Escape. We’ve seen devoted fans storming off in a sulk, we’ve heard repeatedly that LucasArts are big mean scumbags cashing in on the Monkey Island name, and how the Ron Gilbert titles will never be touched. We’ve already mentioned the lengthy overblown rows about the sequels to the first two games.

Escape from monkey island simulator