These real-life adventure games have gained popularity in recent years, providing players with immersive and challenging experiences that require them to solve puzzles and decipher clues in order to escape. If this was where Lucasarts were heading, I should probably be thankful that Sam and Max 2 and Full Throttle 2 both ended up being cancelled.Īlthough Escape From Monkey Island may have disappointed fans of Lucasarts adventure games, the genre itself has continued to thrive in the form of escape rooms. The tail end of the 90’s was an era when everything had to be in 3D no matter what though, much to the detriment of adventure games of the time.Īt least Grim Fandango had a great game underneath (admittedly with a few unfair puzzles). My memories of Escape From Monkey Island are far less favourable. The humour and story were a real letdown, with much of the game rehashing tired old Monkey Island clichés and failing miserably when trying to introduce anything new. This was a huge step back and resulted in a control scheme that was slightly more awkward than Sierra’s AGI games had managed a decade earlier, with no benefit whatsoever for anyone playing the game on a PC.

Neither game was helped by their use of a new game engine which shelved point and click in favour of Alone In The Dark style tank controls. Escape From Monkey Island was the last in the long line of Lucasarts adventure games and was no doubt one of the factors in its demise. The previous entry Grim Fandango had been critically well received but was something of a commercial failure.

Escape from monkey island walk through