I never said it can't have ANYTHING to do with it, its just that it can't rely on assumed knowledge. If it is a preexisting character, they'll likely have some clumsy exposition speech

I bought the series without a shadow of a doubt. FInished the first episode friday. I totally enjoyed it.
No regret. Ok as some said, the camara turning in a certain puzzle in the second map following quest. Can be annoying, but it didnt borther me that much I managed to figure it out.
The inventory combining of items, seems like a step back from just drag and drop items on eachother. But again I could live with it.
The game felt like MI, and gave me all the good feelings of the old MI games back.
So in one word Awesome and must buy for MI fans (tho i think most already did or somehow can manage to wait for the compilation of the series)

Okay, just finished it. I must say I'm much happier about it than my initial impressions promised. It's true what other people are saying, it's Monkey Island, alright. The camera thing isn't as annoying later on as it is in the beginning, the "three-conversation-choices-leading-to-the-same-thing-being-said" thankfully isn't as rampant either, and there aren't too many inventory items you have to combine. I still think the above are stupid design choices, but fortunately, they don't negatively impact the gameplay too much.
I think my main beef with it right now is the "lazy design", meaning they have made only such objects as are needed in the game, and no more. There are a very few exceptions to this, but generally, if an object has a "name", meaning it shows a title when you move the mouse pointer over it, then you need to interact with that object at some point in the game. The old MI games were full of stuff that wasn't a part of any puzzle or task, but which served to flesh out the world around Guybrush. There's almost none of that in this latest incarnation, and I think it's a pity.
That said, I'm glad I bought it, and I look forward to the next episode.

This game is so AWESOME! I love it so much, so glad I preordered it so I can get access to that secret pirate forum (worth it, game creators answer questions) and the special box art. Never played a Monkey Island before, eager to get the remake coming out soon!

Mmmm. I'm thinking about buying this, but I have a couple questions first.
1. I haven't played the other Monkey Island games. I hope to remedy that soon, but I'm wondering how much of the story I would need to know for Tales of Monkey Island to make any sense. Is this a problem?
2. How long is Launch of the Screaming Narwhal by itself? Adventure games have an unfortunate tendency to be rather short, containing between 2 and 8 hours of play. I don't want to spend $34.99 on something that will entertain me for less than a day...

1. I have never played a Monkey Island game before this one, yet I'm enjoying the hell out of this first episode.
2. It took me 3-4 hours to complete this episode alone. When they release the rest of the package, if it continues at this rate, it will be a total of 12 hours. I'd say it's absolutely worth every penny.

Knowing monkey island does help but its a good adventure in and of itself. I'd tend to estimate its total length as somewhere between 12-15 hours in total and thats just completing the core story, not messing about to see all the silly bits

The demo is really lousy; it simply isn't long enough to get an adequate feel for the difficulty of the puzzles and so forth. At this rate I will be waiting until the whole season is available at a discounted price (I refuse to pay more than normal retail price for a game just because they cut it up into pieces).

I took it very slow and explored looked around and admired the scene and all. And when I was done Steam said I played 5.5 hours not sure if it kept counting when I paused the game.
But as I said I took my time.