The International House of Mojo

Once in a while, not often, but once in a while, Jason plays a game. And this time, he even reviewed it. Check out his thoughts on Game of Thrones episode 1: "Iron from Ice".

Turns out it's just that you're not giving the later sequels enough credit.

Every decade or so it's necessary to write an article delving into the "meaning" behind Monkey Island just to remind you of how stale the topic really is. Today comes my contribution to this tradition of over-analysis, but my "twist" is arguing that picking over the subtext of the first two games only casts the post-Ron installments in a more favorable light.

I'm just a merchant of controversy these days, aren't I?

Thanks to Remi for the header image.

In an unprecedented streak of Mojo features, we spit out a review of "Zer0 Sum", the first episode of Tales from the Borderlands. I know, right? Updates? Reviews almost on time? It's a Festivus miracle!

Join in on these historical events by reading the review.

Yes indeed, an honest to god preview of Massive Chalice, that's just how we roll. How does it look so far? Read, and find out!

Telltale has gotten a bit of a bad rep around these parts lately, haven't they? And Jason is not happy about this, and has thus written an op-ed about the subject: Be Grateful to Telltale.

Agree? Disagree? Don't give a crap? Read and sound off in the comments with your own bitching and moaning.

My assigned part it, anyway. In a show of support for Jennifer, I strove to ensure that whatever she could possibly come up with would be considerably less humiliating by comparison.

As you were promised, here is my incident-free re-enactment of the wedding scene from The Secret of Monkey Island as a reward for the support you damned well should have shown to Venture Moon's Duke Grabowski.

Note: We provided subtitles this time out in case the combination of my Cajun accent and the home movie audio fidelity prove to be too much of a barrier.

Seven days to go and a total just shy of $30,000? We feel the Duke Grabowski Kickstarter should be doing better than that, and so we started pondering… Is the issue that the reward tiers might are not enticing enough? One thing led to another and we reached the only logical solution: Like we did with the Double Fine Adventure, we will throw Jason under the bus and launch our own reward tier!

If Duke Grabowski hits $40,000, Jason will act out the whole Secret of Monkey Island church/wedding scene, not by just dramatically reading the text, but also by doing the voices. Guybrush, Elaine, LeChuck, the monkeys, the priest… All of them, with Jason's special little take on them! And as a bonus point, he might just pronounce my name correctly this time!

So go Kickstart now! Mojo rewards await you! (And feel free to relive Jason's previous stab at doing reward tiers.)

Update by Jennifer: Rather than just Jason, lets get more of Mojo involved. If it gets funded, I will perform all four parts of the Curse of Monkey Island pirate song.

So, MrManager, what's your ante? ^_^

First, Broken Age: Act 1 is now available for the iPad. While I've yet to try it, it's pretty obvious that the control scheme from the PC/Mac/Linux (was there a Linux version?) version lends itself very well to touch. So it seems like a worthwhile purchase at $9.99.

An interesting tidbit mentioned by AlfredJ: Seems Sony had approached Disney to get the Grim rights by itself, and only joined up with Double Fine when they found out both companies were after the game. Even more interestingly, Sony, apparently, was going for all of the LEC adventure titles. Did they succeed? Maybe? Hopefully? We'll see, I suppose, but this all has taken a very unexpected turn…

Oh, and there's Star Wars: Battlefield 3 if that's your thing. Actually, it doesn't look half bad. Check out LA Times for a short introductory video.

Update: To please Melancholick, here is a video and some stuff on Costume Quest 2.

While we were down, things kept right on going. So, here's what we missed during our downtime:

The Wolf Among Us Episode 4 finished releasing on the already announced platforms (PC/Mac/PSN/XBLA/iOS) and The Walking Dead: Season Two Episode 3 finally received a release date for PS Vita: June 3rd in North America and June 4th in Europe. Also, Telltale announced a bunch of disc versions of their games: PS4 and Xbox One will be getting The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and The Walking Dead: Season Two. There will also be disc versions of The Walking Dead: Season Two and The Wolf Among Us for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. No release dates yet have been announced.

And last but not least, Ron Gilbert's Match 3 puzzle game, Scurvy Scallywags, is now on Android, Tommo and Night Dive released 5 more Humongous Entertainment games on Steam, and bjbennyboy's Telltale Explorer now supports Poker Night 2, Law & Order: Legacies, and The Walking Dead: Season One.

Actually, no, don't do that, at least not until we get actual control of the domain. But .com is working! And it will be for a year! Celebrate!

We'll now get back to your regular schedule of late news.

You, as us, probably love a good Mojo downtime. Not to mention a good Mojo-domain-not-renewed-time. And that is the current problem: mixnmojo.com is dead (for now) and we have (possibly) temporarily migrated to mixnmojo.co.

So, if you have bookmarks or RSS feeds pointing to .com, please change them to mixnmojo.co. Plus, feel free to spread the word about this on Twitter, Facebook, whatever if you so feel like it. Thanks!

“Mixnmojo.co: Like mixnmojo.com, just one letter shorter!”

Or, as the kids call it, #tbt.

If you're in the mood for some nostalgia, we have a few items that should keep you occupied for the next half hour or so. First, we've uploaded the Curse of Monkey Island cutscenes, as well as those from Escape from Monkey Island.

And if you want some reading material, check out Bill Tiller's EMI pizza orgy questionnaire. Read how the man came up with Tales of Monkey Island a decade before it was released!

You're welcome!

The man might try to keep us down, but we say screw him. Here's our review of the second episode of The Wolf Among Us: Smoke & Mirrors.

Spoiler: We like it. For the most part. Though Telltale seems to try to make it as hard as possible for us to do so. Anyway! Read!

Hey, a timely review? You bet! Our thoughts on Broken Age are out there, and they're loving it. Or we're loving it. Whichever.

Read if you so feel like it.

It came, it went, and here we are: at the brink of 2014. Hell, some of you are already there.

And you voted. Oh, how you voted for your 2013 favorites. The winners, the losers, we have them all summed up. So don't read this, but instead go and read 2013: A Review. The results will shock you!

(They will not shock you.)

Well, that went quick, 2013. And with 2014 looming, there is only one sane thing we can do: post our annual polls!

Run over to the forum and vote for...

Favorite game!
Most wanted in 2014!
The year's biggest bummer!
Your thoughts on 2013!

What the hell are you waiting for? Vote!

So let's address the elephant in the room here: Yes, Mojo is reviewing Broken Sword 5. No, Revolution is not part of the greater LEC-family of companies. Yes, this is part of an expansion of Mojo. No, we're not turning into a general adventure site.

What we are doing is broadening our focus just a tiny little bit. To put our mission-statement-of-sorts in the words of our idea smith, Thrik: “Mojo: Classic LucasArts adventure games, and games that are similar to them.” We'll be covering everything we've always covered, while adding a handful of other games that make sense within Mojo's spiritual scope. Broken Sword for example. Dyscourse, where Tim Schafer is a character. That kinds of stuff. Derivative adventure games that try to ape the success of LucasArts in the 1990s without understanding what they were actually about? We will not cover those.

So basically we're turning into Just Mixnmojo+-ish and we're feeling good about that. Hopefully you will too.

And what better way to kick this off than by reviewing Broken Sword 5? Remember: Mojo still loves you!

A couple of deeply ashamed Mojoers:

Yet republish it we did: Mojo, 10 Years and Counting is back online, and ashamed as we are, there is no point denying that this is the penultimate Mojo article. If there's one article that sums it all up -- the infighting, the insults, the admittance that Mojo is a sentient being and we're all its bitches -- it's this one.

And it's kind of mindblowing that this originally was posted in 2007, more than six years ago.

Get ready for a nostalgia trip, and go read Mojo, 10 Years and Counting, and remember: We're so, so sorry.

So, because Remi is literally unbearable, it's time for a new poll. Ignoring LucasArts, who makes the best adventure games?

There are many fine adventure developers not represented in the options, but that's what our comments are for :)

PS: We'll bring you the results of the last poll presently ;

Want to play Double Fine's Middle Manager of Justice, but not sure if it's worth the time? Why don't you let Jennifer's review help you make up your mind!

Clicky!