It was quite the pleasant surprise this past Friday evening when I get my usual monthly friendly message from Telltale informing me that the latest episode of Tales of Monkey Island was ready for me to collect. The last time we all spent a portion of time with Guybrush proved very entertaining indeed and left us with another cliff-hanger ending to dwell upon, and brilliantly this episode carries on in a similar vein. A flash in the pan episode 3 certainly wasn’t folks; Monkey Island can now be considered well and truly back with a bang.

The curious title of this fourth episode is The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood, and kicks off with the foppish blundering pirate having to defend himself in court over a number of charges bought by incidents that occurred during the first episode. Despite an initial niggling doubt that this would lead to a large portion of the episode being spent searching through huge dialogue trees and not much else, pretty soon you are able to wangle your way out of jail to collect evidence to prove your innocence.

This kicks off probably the most involving, tricky puzzling solving of any episode to date. The first part of this – the collection of aforementioned evidence – works really well and provides some hilariously oddball solutions, although you could level that one of the cases which is solved by a couple of lines of dialogue seems a little… well… light. The second part of the episode involves you having to do something with the magical sponge in your possession, and it’s here that the game can come to somewhat of a grinding halt for many as a couple of the solutions (including a bizarre jungle treasure hunt) do require quite a bit of thought.

That’s not to complain, of course, and it’s good that Telltale are asking us to stretch the old grey matter now and again. They’re also tickling our funny bones a good deal too with the return of another series favourite and some cracking one-liners (‘less plunder, more bunny!’) and visual gags along the way. Apart from keeping the story ticking over in a nice, amusing way, it makes you want to explore as many dialogue options and investigate as many things as you possibly can just to see what kind of reaction you get.

Something this episode does do, however, and something that perhaps no other Monkey Island has done to date, is throw a couple of genuinely emotional moments your way. Given the obvious attachment to the characters the way in which these are done is particularly clever and unexpected, and leaves the player with the contrast between the funny, giggly side we’ve all come to expect and something rather more abrupt and sad. It’s a pretty surprising contrast to have to deal with, and perhaps even more surprisingly it works well.

It also manages to set up the season-ending episode beautifully, providing a proper climax and giving the player plenty of pretty interesting questions to be answered. The way that Telltale have gently ratcheted up the intrigue throughout the episodes has reached a brilliant peak here, and to anyone that is still debating whether their childhood memories will be ruined by playing the new episodes, let those fears float away and dive in. For the rest of us who are hanging by our finger nails waiting for the season ending episode, stay strong chaps, good things come to those who wait.