It took me a bit longer to finish than Full Throttle, but tonight I finished Day of the Tentacle. As with Full Throttle, there were a number of puzzles I remembered and way, way more I didn’t.

The control in Day of the Tentacle is a lot more painful than Full Throttle, in that you still need to use the old “Look/Use/Talk” type buttons which Full Throttle did a great job of streamlining (though that interface was only used on one other game), but it does the job.

The humour and inventive was one of the best parts of Day of the Tentacle, as was the time-traveling aspect which pitched you in three time periods in the same location — a number of puzzles in one time period were affected by occurrences in other time periods.

Next up will be Sam & Max Hit the Road, most likely, since I’ve already played the amazing Grim Fandango and Monkey Island games this year. The off-beat humour in Sam & Max is great, but some of the puzzles are a little out there which makes is a bit more difficult.

Justine, Justine’s mum and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest on Thursday and since I haven’t written much else here recently, I’ll write about that, and you can read it if you care.

I really loved the first film. Everything just seemed to work. It was funny, had enough action, didn’t get too bogged down in the lovey-dovey scenes, and was just plain fun to watch.

The second film has pretty much all of the same elements: evil pirates, explosions, people yelling “arrgh”, swordfights, ship-to-ship fights, and a lot more. But it doesn’t seem to mesh quite as well as the first.

I left the cinema not knowing if I really enjoyed the film enough to want to see it again, which is not really a good sign. It seems as though the shell of the film is there, but it doesn’t appear to have the same delicious gooey centre that the first had; it’s been drained or sucked out by some greedy suit.

It’s also really interesting that the guy who created the Monkey Island games saw a lot of parallels between the game and this movie — there are a lot of similarities: the Jamaican voodoo lady in the swamp, the pirate ghost ship (OK, so that was in the first too, in a different way) are the best two examples I can think of. I’m having trouble deciding who would be Guybrush, but I’d say it would have to be the Orlando Bloom character.

I’ll be there for the third, which comes out next year, but my expectations are not going to be as high this time around.

I’m rather tired this morning. It probably has something to do with the fact that I installed and played the remake of Sid Meier’s Pirates! last night. I started playing at around 7:00, I remember looking at the clock a short time later and it showed 9:45. “No matter”, I thought, “I’ll play just a little longer and then go to bed at a respectable hour.” I rolled into bed at 12:45. Oops.

This is a game I’ve been anticipating for quite a while now and I’m glad to say that — at least initially — it’s as fun (if not more, due to the wider range of stuff to do) that the original, which I played for many an hour.

After all those hours of playing last night with my first character (appropriately named Threepwood), I still haven’t done everything I want to. I have thousands of acres of land, am an Admiral in Her Majesty’s (or possibly His, since it’s set in the late 1600s) Navy (as well as having titles with the Spanish, French and Dutch), have married a busty governer’s daughter and am the second-most notorious pirate in the Caribbean (having defeated the first two of the top ten, along with some other less popular guys).

I’m sure I’ll get some work done today, but I just want to go home and be a pirate. That’s the life for me!