Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Throughout his various mis-adventures, like Homer Simpson, Guybrush Threepwood has held many roles, performed various, even death-defying tasks, and always managed to defeat LeChuck. While some say that Telltale Games and Tales of Monkey Island may have brought him back from the dead, that feat has truly been placed in the proper hands (his) in the final episode of that same series.

Without recanting the whole storyline, this final episode finds ours favorite Mighty Pirate going Altered Beast and rising from his grave. The pox is now gone, Guybrush is dead, and LeChuck is an all-powerful evil voodoo master. Starting off in the land of the dead, and even waiting for the ferry from Death, Guybrush is now in LeChuck’s boots as he must return to life as a zombie to defeat the evil pirate, and of course reclaim his wife. While trying to tie up these final strands of the plot, Telltale finds the chance to introduce a few more characters. Although their time may be short lived, they cement a lasting impression by retaining the ever-faithful Monkey Island charm.

The unfortunate part of this episode is the puzzles require the back and forth traversal of the world. The tediousness really shows when Guybrush performs one action in a scene, then must travel to another remote location to perform one more action, then back to the original site for a third. Rinse, repeat, recycle and you get the gist of the final puzzles. In its defense, this common occurrence in adventure games is practically mandated to be an official entry in the genre. The nature of the episodic content ensured that it was all wrapped up nicely, complete with one of those pretty pink ribbons in the final episode of the series.

One of the overlooked side effects of this game play mechanic is we get to see the whole Tales of Monkey Island environment again in all of its beauty. Good thing too, since LeChuck has pretty much laid waste to most of it and the canvas has been slathered with a brush soaked in “End of the World” ™ paint.

And as this cult-classic franchise oozes more voodoo than you can shake a three-headed monkey, Telltale has conjured up their own mojo and refrained from placing a curse on the Monkey Island series. In comparison to the rest of the episodes, this was my least favorite but still deserves a solid 4 out of 5. Overall, the Tales of Monkey Island episodes deserve nothing less than 4.5 out of 5 for a solid foray in adventure gaming under the Monkey Island guise.

Check out Tales of Monkey Island Episode 5: Rise of the Pirate God and other PC reviews at Test Freaks.