Secret of Monkey Island Review, with Monkey Island 2 thrown in as they are really the same game.
Reviewing my steam games, this week looking at The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. And I’ll throw in Secret of Monkey Island 2 as well, because they have the same feel and review really.
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is an update on the classic 90’s adventure game by LucasArts. The original was a pixel search for items game with a good sense of humour and some catchy music for the 8bit times. Unlike the majority of the adventure games out there Monkey Island promised not to instantly kill you if you did something. At one point they even mock Sierra’s death screen when you have your character walk to the edge of a cliff. (Guybrush is saved from death by a rubber tree and bounces back up.)
First impressions
I was very nostalgic during the first couple of hours of play. I remembered enjoying the game as I traveled back through the twisted logic of the inventors. And then I started to hit the same damn walls that held me up the first time because I don’t think like adventure game writers.
As others have pointed out before, one of the big flaws of adventure games is that there is often only a single way to solve a puzzle. It doesn’t matter if you have a sword, a kitchen knife or a pair of scissors, the only way to cut the dog free is to use the Swiss army knife on the rope. Monkey island has a number of these really annoying puzzles in which ‘really? That is the only answer?’ moments.
They also have an annoying puzzle where you step on a plank and a fish flies up into the air. You need to step on that plank over and over until the fish is flying up and over to you… Really hated that point.
The other walls I hit, beyond the stupid only a specific item can solve this puzzle, where made from the I didn’t see this room barriers. I cannot recall specifically on this play through what room I didn’t remember existed, but there was at least one. And if you don’t know that you can go into this room to get that one specific item needed to solve that puzzle preventing you from going forward the game becomes very frustrating indeed.
In Monkey Island 2 (which I played more recently) the fisherman was where this room problem really hit home. I didn’t know that I could A) walk up to the fisherman to talk to him and B) go behind the house of the governor of Booty Island to sneak into the kitchens. I spend at least 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get a fishing rod and once found how to get that fishing rod from the fisherman. Head banging into the keyboard frustrating.
Monkey Island 2 (and I think a bit of 1) also have extra items that don’t do anything in the game that you can add to your inventory. These items are just included to slow down the rub objecting against other object puzzle solving approach that I fell back into when I got stuck. I can understand why they did it, but it annoyed me all the same.
The whole selling feature of the special editions is that they have entirely new graphics. They were quite proud of them, both at the time the original game came out and these new graphics. I do like the new graphics a fair bit, as they at least look good on my monitor. The game allows you to pop back to the 8bit graphics at any point and that was always good for a laugh. To see how the game used to look.
One downside to the new graphics is it allowed them to clutter up the screen with objects. This just increased the pressure of the pixel hunting as I went looking for what I was to grab. And with screens being larger there are just so many more pixels to worry about.
The humour of the games is what made them so much fun to play in the 90s. How a little nothing of a wannabe pirate can prove to everyone that he can be a hero, and how everyone quickly forgets or doesn’t believe he was able to succeed in the first place. Being a great swordsman, getting his own ship and sailing off to defeat the ghost pirate LeChuck (or the Zombie Pirate LeChuck) and all that unlikely hero jazz.
Only returning to the games I found them a bit childish. Especially in the second one, we had jokes that I didn’t like the first time they came up returning for a laugh. And the second game offers up audio commentary to spice up scenes as well. This made me Hate two out of three people who worked on the game as their own sense of humour and design choices gnawed on my brain… Yet they would gloat about how this element or that joke was one of their best.
Example. At one point or hero is digging up a body in a graveyard, thunder and lightning in the background, all eerie as required. He holds up a bone from the body of the grandfather of our minor foe… And his pants fall down. It wasn’t funny to me. It wasn’t funny to me almost 20 years ago and it wasn’t funny now. And two out of the three people are laughing their heads off as the third is trying to get them to explain how that happened or why it was funny.
Overall I don’t regret buying and playing through the games again. But I didn’t buy them when they came out, but instead when steam had them up on sale. I finished them both but will not be likely to play them ever again. I might get lucky and John may want to play a pirate game when he is older and they will see some use again. Or they may just sit on my steam account to remind me of how going back is possible but not as much fun as promised.
Just over 17 hours of play between the two games, both finished. Under my logic that gives me a steam value of $11 for the pair. I think that is just over what I paid for them, so win.
I also have the 4th in the series, which I will play at some point. But having just finished two it really killed my interest in 4 with how bad I found much of the humour. And listening to the designers talk about how they liked everything I didn’t about 2…
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is an update on the classic 90’s adventure game by LucasArts. The original was a pixel search for items game with a good sense of humour and some catchy music for the 8bit times. Unlike the majority of the adventure games out there Monkey Island promised not to instantly kill you if you did something. At one point they even mock Sierra’s death screen when you have your character walk to the edge of a cliff. (Guybrush is saved from death by a rubber tree and bounces back up.)
First impressions
I was very nostalgic during the first couple of hours of play. I remembered enjoying the game as I traveled back through the twisted logic of the inventors. And then I started to hit the same damn walls that held me up the first time because I don’t think like adventure game writers.
As others have pointed out before, one of the big flaws of adventure games is that there is often only a single way to solve a puzzle. It doesn’t matter if you have a sword, a kitchen knife or a pair of scissors, the only way to cut the dog free is to use the Swiss army knife on the rope. Monkey island has a number of these really annoying puzzles in which ‘really? That is the only answer?’ moments.
They also have an annoying puzzle where you step on a plank and a fish flies up into the air. You need to step on that plank over and over until the fish is flying up and over to you… Really hated that point.
The other walls I hit, beyond the stupid only a specific item can solve this puzzle, where made from the I didn’t see this room barriers. I cannot recall specifically on this play through what room I didn’t remember existed, but there was at least one. And if you don’t know that you can go into this room to get that one specific item needed to solve that puzzle preventing you from going forward the game becomes very frustrating indeed.
In Monkey Island 2 (which I played more recently) the fisherman was where this room problem really hit home. I didn’t know that I could A) walk up to the fisherman to talk to him and B) go behind the house of the governor of Booty Island to sneak into the kitchens. I spend at least 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get a fishing rod and once found how to get that fishing rod from the fisherman. Head banging into the keyboard frustrating.
Monkey Island 2 (and I think a bit of 1) also have extra items that don’t do anything in the game that you can add to your inventory. These items are just included to slow down the rub objecting against other object puzzle solving approach that I fell back into when I got stuck. I can understand why they did it, but it annoyed me all the same.
The whole selling feature of the special editions is that they have entirely new graphics. They were quite proud of them, both at the time the original game came out and these new graphics. I do like the new graphics a fair bit, as they at least look good on my monitor. The game allows you to pop back to the 8bit graphics at any point and that was always good for a laugh. To see how the game used to look.
One downside to the new graphics is it allowed them to clutter up the screen with objects. This just increased the pressure of the pixel hunting as I went looking for what I was to grab. And with screens being larger there are just so many more pixels to worry about.
The humour of the games is what made them so much fun to play in the 90s. How a little nothing of a wannabe pirate can prove to everyone that he can be a hero, and how everyone quickly forgets or doesn’t believe he was able to succeed in the first place. Being a great swordsman, getting his own ship and sailing off to defeat the ghost pirate LeChuck (or the Zombie Pirate LeChuck) and all that unlikely hero jazz.
Only returning to the games I found them a bit childish. Especially in the second one, we had jokes that I didn’t like the first time they came up returning for a laugh. And the second game offers up audio commentary to spice up scenes as well. This made me Hate two out of three people who worked on the game as their own sense of humour and design choices gnawed on my brain… Yet they would gloat about how this element or that joke was one of their best.
Example. At one point or hero is digging up a body in a graveyard, thunder and lightning in the background, all eerie as required. He holds up a bone from the body of the grandfather of our minor foe… And his pants fall down. It wasn’t funny to me. It wasn’t funny to me almost 20 years ago and it wasn’t funny now. And two out of the three people are laughing their heads off as the third is trying to get them to explain how that happened or why it was funny.
Overall I don’t regret buying and playing through the games again. But I didn’t buy them when they came out, but instead when steam had them up on sale. I finished them both but will not be likely to play them ever again. I might get lucky and John may want to play a pirate game when he is older and they will see some use again. Or they may just sit on my steam account to remind me of how going back is possible but not as much fun as promised.
Just over 17 hours of play between the two games, both finished. Under my logic that gives me a steam value of $11 for the pair. I think that is just over what I paid for them, so win.
I also have the 4th in the series, which I will play at some point. But having just finished two it really killed my interest in 4 with how bad I found much of the humour. And listening to the designers talk about how they liked everything I didn’t about 2…