Today’s post is something of a review for Telltale’s new game Tales of Monkey Island, but also something of a rant.  First, let’s get to the review.  On the Geekrising ratings scale of 1 to 10, I would definitely give it an Awesome.  I really enjoyed playing it, and it absolutely lived up to my expectations.  It’s a rare thing when a new iteration of a franchise that you loved as a child is released, and it’s actually good.  The Secret of Monkey Island was one of my absolute favorite games as a child, so I was really expecting a lot from this game in terms of story, humor, and good ol’ fashion wackiness.  Tales of Monkey Island delivered all that and more, in all but one area:  the ending.

Don’t worry, you’ll get no spoilers here.  Suffice it say, that the ending was less than satisfactory.  The ridiculous yet compelling storyline in Tales is what kept me coming back for more.  I was drawn in by the hilarious, well-developed characters.  I wanted to see Guybrush finally reunited with Elaine  …again.  I was always waiting for the next bizarre twist of events.  The ending, however, was only unpredictable in its predictability.  The story was more or less resolved, everything that needed to happen happened, and…  that was it.

There were no resolutions to silly side stories, or absurd explanations for other events in the game.  There weren’t really even any clever jokes.  The quality of the story and gameplay right up to that point had all led me to believe that something great was in store for me at the end.  Instead, all I got was a cutscene shorter than the smart people line at a Nickleback concert and only slightly more entertaining.  The only other part to the ending sequence was a short teaser for the sequel.

Fortunately for Telltale, I enjoyed the game enough that I’ll most likely buy the second season as well.  The same cannot be said, however, for Ubisoft’s last Prince of Persia game, another title with an utterly despicable ending.  When a game chooses to rely so heavily on story for it’s value, it damn well better provide a satisfactory conclusion to the story.  Honestly, I really don’t care how well the first game ties in to the sequel.  No more reason for a sequel is necessary other than that people really liked the first one.  If you finish the first story well, I don’t really care what kind of plot acrobatics  you need to perform to bring the characters back for another go.

Prince of Persia even had the gall to make me believe that purchasing the extra content for the game would provide me with some kind of catharsis, but even after completing it I was left in exactly the same place.  Prince of Persia had a lot of good things going for it, but unfortunately for Ubisoft, not enough to warrant me going through that again in the sequel.

Long story short, worry about the ending to the first game before planning the second.  Only if the first game is good enough will people want to buy the next one.  Due to the years between realease, “cliffhangers” just don’t make sense in videogames.

Every once in a while a game comes around that has a concept which is so awesome, nothing else about the game matters.  For me, 5th Cell’s Scribblenauts is one of these games.  I know the game has been out for quite some time now, but I’ve actually just gotten around to playing  it.  And boy am I glad I did.

The concept of the game is simple:  Give the player a problem and let him come up with his own tools to solve it.  In Scribblenauts you can create literally almost any object that you can imagine; just type it in and watch it magically appear on-screen.  This kind of freedom for the end user is pretty unprecedented, at least in this type of graphical fashion. This unbridled freedom raises a multitude of very interesting questions from a design and playability standpoint, not the least of which is “Can I draw a penis?”

Unfortunately, the answer is no.  For various reasons, the developers decided not to include some things in their dictionary.  According to the game, the rules are as follows:

1. It must be a real-life physical object.
2. It cannot be:

• a place
• a proper name
• suggestive material
• shape
• Latin or Greek root word
• alcohol
• race or culture
• vulgarity
• copyrighted

Most of these rules aren’t so bad.  I’m pretty sure I can live without Latin and Greek root words, for instance.  The one rule in there to note, though, is the prohibition of “suggestive material” and vulgarity.  A wise decision by the developers, I think, as this makes depravity all the more fun.  By outlawing outright representations of obscenity, they have opened the door to a whole world of subversive humor.  I would love to see someone do a contest for the best representation of “X” body part on-screen in Scribblenauts.

Quite seriously, though, the game is an enormous amount of fun.  Of course, it’s not without it’s flaws.  For example, the controls can be quite wonky at times, and many different words render on-screen as the same object, which can be disappointing.  Also, a lot of expected interactions between objects are missing.  These small flaws are easily forgiven, though, on account of its massive enjoyability.  I was skeptical when I first heard of the game and its concept, but they really delivered on their promise.

My only hope is that 5th Cell are already working on a sequel, with more objects and interactions.  Someday, I would love to see something like this done in 3D, perhaps a bit like Little Big Planet.  Until then, I’ll be happy drawing suggestively placed fruits.

Hello, and welcome to the new Geekrising!  It’s been about 2 years since my last post here, but I’ve decided to dust off the shelves and polish everything up.  For those who visited the site before, you’ll see that the look has been completely updated.  For those of you who haven’t, you guys are jerks.  Kidding, kind of!  Just know that the new look is far superior to the old one.  You see, I believe that websites, like puppies, should be thrown out  and replaced every couple of years.  Keeps things fresh, don’t you think?

Along with the change in appearance comes a change in style as well.  If you read any of the previous posts, you’ll see a certain amount of, well, silliness contained within them.  While I still plan on maintaining humor and parody as the main focus of the blog, I wasn’t quite satisfied with the style of the posts.  In short, they smacked of silliness and a bit of immaturity.  Which are both good in moderation, of course.  I suppose what I’m saying is that I plan on being more moderately immature.

Though the style is changing a bit, I’m keeping the old posts up for posterity.  Yes, I DO believe I am that relevant.  So feel free to have a look back at them, and of course stay tuned for some more kick-ass posts.