Lair of the Leviathan starts off with a succinct introduction, giving a brief overview of the past two chapters and refreshing the player on what exactly Guybrush, our hapless hero, is doing. And then you tossed into the belly of a giant fish, in dire peril yet again.

This latest installment is episode three of five in season one of Tales of Monkey Island, and if TellTale Games keeps listening to their fans on what's good and what's not, then the last installment promises to be legendary! They have obviously been reading reviews of the series, because there have been some superb improvements in this chapter. Our biggest complaint last time with episode two was the nasty movement controls, of which I'm happy to report has been addressed. It's now a WASD key movement which is exactly the same as all previous WASD schemes.  Purists will also be happy to note that click-to-move is also an available option.

Lair of the Leviathan is my favorite so far in terms of writing. Some of the one-liners and jokes were brilliant to the point of soda-out-of-nose laughter! An old favorite character returns with some of the best jokes in the entire game, but we'll give you no spoilers as to whom. As always, the top-notch banter between the characters is one of the highest points of the game.

Guybrush's quest this month is to search for a Voodoo Sponge. We have no idea what that is, and neither does Guybrush. It's a race against time as the Curse continues to get a stronger hold on our hero, who's starting to look like he's contracted a Plague. He has turned a very hideous shade of green and is given to bouts of uncontrollable rage, as is to be expected of a pirate who has been without rum for long periods of time.

As with the precious two chapters, Lair is visually gorgeous. In another much-appreciated fix from last month, the cut-scenes now flow almost perfectly into player-control. The majority of this chapter takes place inside of a giant fish, and if you watched closely during episode two, you can see ripples in the background from its gills.  Which is one example of the brilliant attention to detail that makes this game so engrossing.

The solid voice acting continues into episode three. The “lesser characters” (read: everyone who isn't Guybrush) miss out on having some of that Grade-A comedic material, but they manage to get in a few great jokes anyway. Pirate music is pirate music, and we still like the soundtrack and the music very rarely distracts from the game-play.

There have also been some excellent improvements with the puzzles. Clues are more intuitive and can be found scattered throughout the dialogue.  The game is also less linear, with only two real choke points when a puzzle must be solved to continue. At times the clues does get a little too obvious but this doesn't happen very often.

With the huge improvement found in Lair of the Leviathan, we are getting more excited to see what the TellTale Games comes up with for the final two installments of Season one of Tales of Monkey Island. Lair is a bit longer than the other two, taking about 6 hours to complete, but it's 6 hours spent laughing and actually enjoying yourself. We can't wait to see what happens to Puke-Green Guybrush in the next chapter!