Tag: Monkey Island
Return of the point-and-click adventure game – Monkey Island™
Yesterday, I began a series of posts about the return of my favorite genre of video games, the point-and-click adventure, with some thoughts on the newest games featuring Sam & Max.
Now get your breath mints ready as we head for Melee Island™ and…
The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition
No fan of point-and-click adventures can resist any game with Monkey Island™ in the title. Much to the surprise of such fans, two new games are now available for consumption following the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate™ in his quest to defeat the Ghost Pirate LeChuck.
First up: The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition has hit XBox 360 via XBox Live Arcade. It’s a remake of the original with redrawn HD graphics, a new musical score, and plenty of fantastic voice acting.
The gameplay of the Special Edition is fantastic. It feels just like the original, even with having to drag a pointer around the screen using the XBox analog joystick. The selection of commands (“Look at”, “Talk to”, etc) is a little bit clunky, requiring the use either a drop down menu or the directional pad. But other than that, the new version performs well.
Unfortunately, the new graphics leave something to be desired. Here is a comparison image between the original and the Special Edition (click the bottom one to enlarge it in a new window):
The graphics have been (more or less) faithfully recreated, replacing pixelated graphics with sharp, crisp HD images. However, in many cases, some visual comedy elements have been replaced with uninspired artwork lacking the same style and flair of the original. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It seems like the artists in the new version took some artistic liberties in places where it wasn’t necessary.
But all of the most important elements remain accurate, or improved upon, so I can’t complain too much about the artistic style of the Special Edition. In fact, one artistic decision that did work for me was to replace the old semi-realistic close-ups of people with new animated ones. Here’s an example:
The coolest feature of the Special Edition is the ability to seamlessly switch back and forth between the classic and new versions of the game. By hitting the Back button on the XBox 360 controller, the screen shifts and zooms, allowing you to get the original pixelated experience and the HD graphics all at once. Groovy.
There are also a number of visual references to other LucasArts point-and-click adventure games scattered throughout the Special Edition. I won’t spoil them for you here, but it was nice to see a few familiar characters hidden amongst the scenery.
If you’re not familiar with the original game’s puzzles, you’ll likely beat it in around 6-7 hours. If you’re one to get stuck a lot in this type of game, the Special Edition will guide you along with its built-in hint system. No need to head to GameFAQs every few minutes. Of course, if you already know how to navigate you’re way through the game, you’ll likely conquer it in a couple of hours or less.
And if you don’t have an XBox 360 or would like to take Guybrush and the gang with you on the go, you can also play The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
But this isn’t the only new entry into the Monkey Island™ saga…
Tales of Monkey Island™
Like with the new Sam and Max series, Telltale Games is bringing the whole Monkey Island™ world back to life, but this time with 3-D graphics. The first episode in the new Tales of Monkey Island™ series is available for download now exclusively on the Nintendo Wii via WiiWare. Screenshots:
I’ve only played the first 15 minutes of this game so far, but it seems like a decent variation on the Monkey Island™ series. The voice acting is good, though the audio quality is a bit rough. Likewise, the game’s frame rate seems to be low, causing the game to be quite choppy at times. I’m not sure if Telltale Games pushed the Wii’s processing power limits (judging from the seemingly low polygon count of objects, I doubt it) or if there’s just some other problem with the game.
Like Telltale’s Sam & Max series, the dialogue trees in this game appear to have issues. You pick one phrase and Guybrush says something similar, but not quite as funny. It’s kind of baffling.
At $10 per episode, the price is steep. If this game is anything like the Sam and Max series from Telltale Games, I imagine I’ll get around 2 hours of gameplay out of each episode. Comparing that to the $10 I paid for 6-7 hours of playing The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition and it doesn’t quite seem worth it. Even worse is that you can purchase all five episodes on PC for around $35. Why do Wii players pay a premium?
Even with the high cost, I simply couldn’t resist this purchase and will likely continue to buy the episodes as they’re released. But if you’re not a huge fan of Monkey Island™ or point-and-click adventures, I’d advise that you steer clear of this one for now, at least until the price drops.
Monkey Island™ 2 Special-Uber Edition
Some Germans have created a fantastic concept of what they’d like to see out of a Special Edition-style remake of Monkey Island™ 2. While this is essentially a fan’s hopes and wishes, it is extraordinarily well made:
We can only hope that LucasArts sees this (I’m sure they will) and decides to go down this path (not likely) in creating the next Monkey Island™ game.
Have you played any of the Monkey Island games, new or old? Comment!
