This morning was looking a little on the quiet side here at UltraNinjas; Jay had his coffee, I had my juice and we were casually sitting here letting our brains crank slowly into gear. Jay’s peaceful morning was about the be catastrophically shattered however by a slight gasp and a gigantic yell of ‘WOOOO’ when I happened to accidentally find that Telltale had released the second chapter in their Tales of Monkey Island series.

By now you’re well aware of my love for the series, so I need not delve too far deeply into fanboy dribble this time around (although no doubt I will try at some point). It’d be fair to say that a result of being a big fan of Guybrush that I anticipated the arrival of the first game in the series with a mixture of fear and excitement, but to my pleasure it ended up being a rather enjoyable 3-hour jaunt through in-jokes and general silliness. The second episode, subtitled The Siege on Spinner Cay, builds very nicely upon the solid foundations and continues moving things forward in a pleasing manner.

Picking up where part one cliffhangered us (not convinced it’s a word, but it suits so it stays), Spinner Cay sees Guybrush duelling with a mysterious foe who has rather inconveniently stopped him from searching for not only his missing wife and mortal enemy, but also some sort of magic sponge that will cure a nasty pox that he accidentally unleashed. After the usual sequence of amusing swordplay banter and silly solutions, you find yourself on an island tasked with finding three artefacts to help you discover aforementioned sponge.

The first thing to note is that the level of humour feels much higher and richer in this second episode, with Guybrush coming out with some hilariously silly comments when looking at even insignificant items, leading you to want to click around on pretty much everything and see what happens. Some of the conversations you end up in are deliciously silly too, such as Guybrush getting slightly miffed over how to deal with a strange androgynous fish person and the resulting uncomfortable manner in which he deals with it flirting with him. It’s classic Monkey Island stuff, and it’s genuinely amusing.

As you’d expect, the main characters are lavished with care and attention to make sure they’re just how everyone’s ragtag bunch of silly pirates should be. Where the game falls down a little is in the backing characters that are introduced throughout; the series’ main antagonist seems to be shaping up pretty nicely, but once again you’re often dealing with identikit blundering pirates trying to stop you achieving whatever it is you’re doing. I’ll hold my hands up now and say that it’s a struggle to remember much about anyone other than the main cast having completed the chapter, which is a little disappointing.

The game does, however, make up for this in the way it’s laid out, and the way it allows you to tackle puzzles. The three artefacts you need to collect are obtainable in any order, leaving you to be able to explore the game’s selection of islands and experiment free from the pressing concern that you are missing a very narrow path of progression as you go. Plus, having reviewed a collection of older point-and-clickers recently it hammered home just how well the puzzles were designed, with each being solvable with a little logic and lateral thinking. The one thing that really works is that the game makes you think the right way just by the whacky nature and silliness occurring, and messing around trying to find outlandish solutions is fantastic.

You can’t help but tip your pirate hat to Telltale as a result, because they’re doing a great series serious justice at the moment. You know that a game has got its claws into you when you finish the chapter and are desperate to want to play on past the latest cliffhanger ending to see what happens and what mild lunacies are thrown up next, and even though I was always going to be partial to Guybrush and crew’s new adventures it’s certainly a feeling inspired by the current content, not nostalgia. Keep it up chaps!