Tales of Monkey Island - Chapter 1

ricksauer · Post by **ricksauer** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 5:22 am

Downloading now!

Will let you know my thoughts when I've completed.

Nikioko · Post by **Nikioko** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:13 am

I actually know some guys who already completed it, thanks. I personally will buy the game when it is completely out.

marticus · Post by **marticus** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 11:22 am

I played it earlier and quite enjoyed it. Waiting for the whole thing is kinda silly because you miss out on all the inter-episode info and speculation on the TTG forums; oh and the spoilers

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 2:36 pm

I tried to download it yesterday, but the whole server was having problems due to thousands of people logging on. I downloaded it today and played for about 20 minutes. I don't want to start playing it just yet, since I'm still in the middle of Gobliiins 4.

The Wallace & Gromit controls cause some camera angle issues, especially during the prologue on the boat. Plus, the angles are fixed and controls are relative to the angle, so when you're moving to the left, your character might turn if the camera angle changes. But I guess this doesn't really spoil the game.

Also, it annoys me how they choose a 1 through 9 dial for the graphics quality setting. Maybe I don't want the depth of field but would rather want more AA? Why can't they have a proper config for the graphics? Just a thought, though. The game runs fine on the highest settings. It's not particularly demanding.

ricksauer · Post by **ricksauer** » Wed Jul 08, 2009 11:43 pm

Had the same issues with navigation. Ditched the recommended mouse movement for the old arrow keys.

I did like the one click action though, pickup, open, talk all done with a single click.

The combining of elements in inventory was a little clunky. You have to click one item, put it in slot one, click item 2 and put it in slot 2 and click combine. Why couldn't you just click item 1 on item 2 and see if that works.

Graphicss are glossy and well polished, but did come across a few sections were there were gaps in the pixel maps. A bit of stutter in some of the conversation audio. Also when you select an answer, and I usually pick the smart ass answer, Guybrush very rarely said what the text stated.

The puzzles are good with a few modes reminisant of old map following from early incarnations. But I did like the fact I didn't have to move the mouse around the screen just to find anything I needed to interact with or pick up. Background was uncluttered without the need to look at every rock or nook in a bookcase.

A good storyline with a massive gap between this game and the last (prequel maybe?) but easily caught up on after following the diaglogue.

DrMcCoy · Post by **DrMcCoy** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 12:20 am

ricksauer wrote:I did like the one click action though, pickup, open, talk all done with a single click.

This one I totally hate. I want the old style verb bar back.

ricksauer wrote:The puzzles are good

A bit too much on the easy side though.

ricksauer wrote:A good storyline

Yeah, and they managed to nail the Monkey Island atmosphere.

jg · Post by jg » Thu Jul 09, 2009 7:31 am

ricksauer wrote:Also when you select an answer, and I usually pick the smart ass answer, Guybrush very rarely said what the text stated.

I seem to remember this as a gag in the old MI games, but it seems a bit overused in Tales.

There are several GUI gags in Tales though. I love when the hover label changes after you've examined some items. Sometimes it even changes several times if you keep clicking. That's exactly the sort of fourth-wall breaking humour I expect from MI.

bobdevis · Post by **bobdevis** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 9:57 am

Well I played the demo.
The DirectX that I had on my Vista boot wasn't somehow good enough and I needed to let the installer update it. (There goes the prospect of easy VM/Wine usage. How can the default DirectX 9c possibly not be enough for this? It's not that they are doing really complex graphical stuff.)
The game somehow doesn't support the 1680x1050 resolution and switches to a lower one. (Why is this a problem for a 3D game?)
The controls are still very odd, about just as annoying as in MI5. (Feels like a bad port of a console game)

The atmosphere and the humor are nice, but I have seen freeware games with a much better finishing touch.
Shame.

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 10:18 am

Like I said before, I only played the episode for about 20 minutes, but there's another thing I was wondering about. How long is the episode? The installation program is only 188 megs.

When I pre-ordered ToMI I got a code for a free episode, and since I already have both seasons of Sam & Max, I chose the first episode of Wallace & Gromit. The installation for W&G was 352 megs, and the game was rather short, with only three locations. Telltale uses same engine and same compressions in their games, and ToMI is closer to W&G than any other game, engine wise. This makes me wonder how much content did they manage to put there.

jg · Post by jg » Thu Jul 09, 2009 10:20 am

bobdevis wrote:How can the default DirectX 9c possibly not be enough for this? It's not that they are doing really complex graphical stuff.

I thought the depth of field effects were quite advanced and added a great deal to the atmosphere. But I don't think it's a matter of what's "enough", it's a matter of which libraries they compiled against, and naturally they used the latest available.

bobdevis wrote:I have seen freeware games with a much better finishing touch.

Which ones? Not trying to disprove you, I'd just like to play those games.

DrMcCoy · Post by **DrMcCoy** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 11:44 am

bobdevis wrote:here goes the prospect of easy VM/Wine usage.

It does run in Wine though, with some native DirectX DLLs (slower, of course).

bobdevis · Post by **bobdevis** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:46 pm

jg wrote: Which ones? Not trying to disprove you, I'd just like to play those games.

What I was thinking of when I made that comment is Warsow, the ultra-clean looking Quake3 clone.
It agrees to be 'friends' with your monitor(s), mouse and grfx card with great ease.
I don't get why a for-pay studio like Telltale can't give me that same experience, regardless of the game genre.

jg wrote: But I don't think it's a matter of what's "enough", it's a matter of which libraries they compiled against, and naturally they used the latest available.

The latest available would be some version of DX10 and that would be commercial suicide. I do get your point though.

Mud · Post by **Mud** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 6:48 pm

Morden wrote:How long is the episode?

I wouldn't worry. It took me about 5 hours to beat the game.

Rasi · Post by **Rasi** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 3:06 pm

DrMcCoy wrote:
bobdevis wrote:here goes the prospect of easy VM/Wine usage.
It does run in Wine though, with some native DirectX DLLs (slower, of course).

Hmm.. what dlls exactly? i didnt manage to start it and appdb.org doesnt mention additional dlls.

DrMcCoy · Post by **DrMcCoy** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 4:55 pm

Rasi wrote: Hmm.. what dlls exactly? i didnt manage to start it and appdb.org doesnt mention additional dlls.

d3dx9_41.dll. Wallace and Gromit also needs d3dx9_27.dll and d3dx9_36.dll.

Or at least the Wine version I use (1.0.1) does. Could be that a later version has already implemented that itself, though.