Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 3: Lair of the Leviathan Review

When we last left our mighty pirate hero he was being swallowed up by an extremely large manatee. This game opens up, as the previous chapter did, with a brief recap of the events by the Voodoo Lady. We then cut to our trio or heroes, Guybrush, LeFlay and Winslow, deep inside the gullet of that large ocean mammal.

Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 3: Lair of the Leviathan continues where we left off and is the middle chapter of the five part series. This chapter of the game switches from the more action oriented play of Siege of Spinner Cay back to the more puzzle focused game play of Launch of the Screaming Narwhal. The difference being this puzzles don't seem as hard as they have previously. There seemed to be more guidance towards the solutions of the puzzle and it was easier to figure them out. That's not to say you won't have to make some crazy combinations, such as combining an employee manual with a torture handbook, but they seem to be more straightforward than the past chapters. There also didn't seem to be as much humor throughout Chapter 3. This could be because all the characters are deep inside the belly of a beast, but who knows for sure. There are still some funny moments, but the one liners are less obvious and it's more about crazy situations this time around.

The story of Lair of the Leviathan centers around Guybrush trying to replace the cochlea of the manatee in order to help the beast get back on track towards the sacred manatee mating grounds and all of the game play focuses around the inside of the creature's mouth and it's stomach. The environment is appropriately disgusting. You'll be sliding down the tongue and throat and exploring the stomach areas complete with pools of bile and disgusting fleshy tubes that Guybrush uses to travel quickly to different parts of the stomach. Guybrush meets the explorer Coronado de Cava inside the beast. He finds the scientist is very crazy and does not want other adventurer's trying to find La Esponja Grande before him. He must, at one point, convince de Cava that he and Morgan LeFlay are married and have entered the manatee on vacation.

The puzzles center around Guybrush trying to join the Brotherhood that the pirates inside the manatee have created to protect the cochlea from being replaced because they enjoy the life they now have. Guybrush must obtain a unanimous vote from all four members, one of them being a skeleton, to join the brotherhood, but they won't vote for him until he's done something for him. One of the pirates wants a date with Morgan, another only votes the same way as the skeleton and one wants you to beat them in a pirate face off where you make funny or disturbing faces that are better than the other competitor. These puzzles are cleverly devised, but as mentioned before, not too difficult. They involve having Morgan creatively interrogate one of the crew members, convincing one that Guybrush will be tortured once he joins the Brotherhood and finding a number of disturbing pirate faces that can be used in the face off.

Lair of the Leviathan focuses more on the story than previous entries in the series and really sets the stage for what will come in the last two chapters. It's not as funny as previous chapters, but that doesn't take away from the overall experience. If you've invested in the first two chapters of the game it's well worth your money to continue the story as it has become very interesting. I'm really beginning to wonder if their is some joke behind the appearance of all the pirates, because they have continued, yet again, to model them off of the previous characters with a few changes and there was not appearance of the pyrite parrot this time around. For fans of the Monkey Island series, you really shouldn't miss out on this adventure. The pox is spreading...

Final Score: 4/5

Review copy of the game provided by TellTale Games.