Customer Reviews

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition [Online Game Code]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For those of you who don't remember, Monkey Island was an adventure game developed by Lucas Arts nearly 20 years ago. You play as pirate-wannabe Guybrush Threepwood and attempt to uncover the secret of MI as well as defeating the ghost pirate Captain LeChuck and win over the governor of Melee Island, Elaine. It spawned 3 sequels but since the last one was made in 2000, things have been pretty quiet to the point where I thought we'd seen the last of Guybrush Threepwood. Lucas Arts have dusted off the cobwebs and Monkey Island has now been re-made in beautiful HD graphics, newly recorded music with live instruments and best of all with added voice over from the cast of the previous 2 MI games. This is a dream come true for MI fans like myself and a great way to introduce this classic to a new generation of gamers. An added bonus is you can switch back to classic mode at any point during the game just to compare how things looked back then. It's a fun way to see how far we've advanced in the last couple decades. Other than the improvements, the game remains intact without any unnecessary changes. My only criticism would be the new redesigned characters look way too cartoony for my taste and I hate what they've done with Guybrush's hair. Otherwise, it's a blast to play this game again and here's hoping that a Monkey Island 2 Special Edition is in the works.

In a sense, I don't really feel like Monkey Island needs much promotion from me, because adventure gaming was such a huge part of computer game history, and Monkey Island was perhaps the finest example of adventure gaming. When I heard the game was being redesigned with modern graphics, sound and voice work, I was thrilled. Monkey Island was a darn near perfect game, and for that reason alone, I knew the redesign deserved those first three stars. In Monkey Island, you play Guybrush Threepwood; a scrawney little guy who wants to be a fearsome pirate; winning swordfights, hunting treasure and stealing from the rich.

Well, as it turns out, being a pirate is a rather tough business, with some strict job requirements, and after his job interview with the head pirates, Guybrush sets out to prove his worth. Armed with a mastery of insults and the ability to hold his breath for ten minutes, Guybrush Threepwood must learn swordplay, thievery and treasure-huntery even before the end of the game's first chapter (of four,) and then things really pick up.

The evil ghost pirate Lechuck is roaming the islands with his dread pirate crew, scaring all the other pirates into landlubber-hood, and Guybrush will need to travel to Monkey Island if he wants to do something about it. There's also the beautiful Governor Marley to worry about. She seems like more than a mere damsel in distress, of course, but what's her real role in Guybrush's adventure, and what are Lechuck's plans for her?

This stuff is even funnier than it sounds.

Of course, all of that only has to do with the game's storyline. The gameplay may turn some gamers off, since the game uses a point-and-click interface, with much less jumping, slashing, shooting and killing than modern gamers are used to. The majority of the gameplay consists of wandering around, looking at things, pushing them, pulling them, talking to them, picking them up and using them to solve logic puzzles. This is the backbone of the Monkey Island gameplay, and while it may not appeal to the mainstream crowd, there are a great many people who enjoy being able to complete challenges on sheer brainpower alone, and not having to worry about being ambushed by enemies every five seconds. For those who like games that provoke them to thought, rather than violence, Monkey Island is the cream of the crop.

The original Secret of Monkey Island was made using midi music and early VGA graphics. It didn't even have any voice acting. Because of this, it makes perfect sense for the game to be re-made with updated graphics and sound, and this is more or less what was done. I found some design choices baffling, but at least if you prefer the original version to the updated one, you can switch back with a single keystroke.

The graphics and sound of the updated version are of an unquestionably superior quality. The music is very well-done, and the voice acting is pretty nice. The man who plays Guybrush does a good job as always, and some very professional voice actors played other roles, such as Rob Paulson as the ghost Bob, one of the Fetuccini brothers, and a couple of others. That kind of voice talent is almost guaranteed to not sound like they're reading from a script. In fact, the only issue I had with any of the revised sound was that Governor Marley's original actress (from Monkey Island 3) didn't reprise her role, and the woman who does play her doesn't sound british enough, in my opinion.

In graphics, however, this game makes some design decisions that I couldn't really agree with. For one thing, the decision was apparently made to shift the art style of the original from relatively-realistic to the cartoon look of later games; something I never really felt was right for Monkey Island. Monkey Island 3 was fantastic, of course, but I feel it succeeded in spite of the cartoon graphics, rather than benefitting from them.

To their credit, most of the characters still generally carry the same mood and feel that they did in the original; especially in their close-up portraits, the only exceptions, oddly-enough, being Guybrush and the Governor, who look like relatively-bland cartoon characters, rather than innocently-boyish and enchantingly beautiful in a cunning sort of way, respectively, so the damage done by the art shift is minimized most effectively. I just don't feel the shift needed to happen at all.

The third change was to the interface. The interface, originally, was for a sentence-line interface with selectable verbs (push, pull, pick up, etc...) to be at the bottom of the screen, along with a scrollable inventory, while the action goes on at the top. This has been changed to a pair of subscreens for verbs and inventory, which isn't all that hard to navigate, if you're willing to use the keyboard. I admit, this element of the game felt somewhat forced, and a littly clumsy. In practice, it certainly didn't play out as smoothly as the original interface, and I found myself wondering why this change was made, so I looked it up.

Apparently, the interface change was made because the game designers were unhappy with "the interface taking up half the screen." Fair enough. This gives them the opportunity to use the other half of the screen to show the gamers more scenery in the Monkey Island world, right?

Not exactly. Instead of adding anything where the old interface used to be, the remake has re-done the graphics of Monkey Island, then just centered it, so that it feels like you're watching the game in widescreen format, and there's no fullscreen format to switch to. That might fly for movies that were originally released that way, but in a video game, it really feels like there aught to be something going on in those large, black bars. Personally, I would have put a sentence line interface on the top, and the inventory on the bottom, but I wasn't in charge of the project.

As you can see, I found the changes made to the game to be something of a mixed bag, in terms of whether I preferred them or not. The option to change back to the original does a lot of good, but there's one feature that, if included, would have really made my day; allowing the player to turn individual features on and off, rather than just turning all the revisions off, or turning all of them on with a single button-press.

For example, an options screen under the main menu, full of check-boxes, reading things like "Voices on/off," "Music old/new," "Graphics old/new," and "Interface old/new." I only bring this up because I was sort of hoping for it, and because if this feature had been included, I'd always play the game with the first two options on, and the last two off.

In short, as a game, Monkey Island is stellar. As a remake, it's merely good. For this reason, I give it four stars out of five. I was a little disappointed, but not much. In general, I had a good time playing it, and I'll most likely play it again. Many of the lines carry a special wit and humor to them when spoken aloud, so I feel that this remake did add something to the series that wasn't there before, and if it didn't completely fulfill its potential, then at least it gave today's generation the chance to experience one of the greatest video game classics of all time. I think that's a very good thing, so overall, well done.

Monkey Island is an old series that was first released in 1990. The first game was called The Secret of Monkey Island and was for the PC. It was a point and click adventure game with comedy and some tiny action. At E3 2009 Lucas-Arts announced that they were working on a remake for Secret of Monkey Island. Now usually when you think remakes, you think - "Oh no, they're going to mess everything up and it just wont be as good" But Monkey Island SE is the opposite of terrible. It's great. Lucas-Arts went in and remade all the artwork and character models, and updated them to a more cartoonish yet realistic look. They also took away the interface that took up half of the screen and mapped it to the Left and Right triggers which works great except for one minor gameplay flaw that makes it very hard to use during the last part in Chapter one. Despite a few problems the game is extremely well polished and looks fantastic. Another great thing, is that if people don't like the new look, they can always press the "back" button on your controller to instantly change from the new look to the old classic look. A new hint system made its way in and is very helpful but if you use them to much it will place you lower on the leaderboards. Overall the gameplay is great, funny, easy to use, and a great remake to a classic.
Graphics 9.5
Gameplay 7.5(because of that minor flaw I mentioned earlier)
Sound 10
Fun 10
Replay Value 7 (unless you insist on being #1 on the xbl leaderboards)

I don't see why the originals needed to be updated. I played MI and MI2 way back when and loved em. The first one had all this silence in it, and music only at certain parts. That was fine. MI2 had music all the time, which was obviously very meticulously planned, coz it fit perfectly.

The blockiness of the characters provided an ESSENTIAL part to the humor, which was the quasi-deadpan nature of it all. The mannerisms of MI2 Guybrush when pointing to a door saying "let me see your files", or flipping his wig when seeing a fake LeChuck at a Mardi Gras party...or looking at the viewer in MI saying "what a buncha lazy pigs."...I applaud Lucasarts for attempting something new with the sequels, and the Special Editions, but this is a series that did NOT need cartoony spaghetti characters (Guybrush looked tough enough in MI2, but was still a poser dork...he did not need to be made to look like a gangly freak) and did not need voiceovers.

So, the only appeal to me on these Special Editions is the new music and the nice backgrounds. I am so glad you can turn the voices off.

Never played the original. I was unfortunately not into PC gaming when this game was first released. But I do love adventure games and I am so glad that Lucas Arts has seen fit to bring this game back with updated visuals, and not just a re-release of the old engine.

Beautiful hand drawn graphics, very good voice acting and from what I read on the interwebs the game play and puzzles have stayed true to the original work. And if you loved the original so much that you are flabbergasted by the updated ones, then hit the back button and voila....no fancy updated graphics, no new re-mastered musical score, no voice acting.

I would have purchased this game even if it were mediocre just to send developers a message. We want more games like this. The adventure genre is not dead as it was once told. Thankfully this game is still great 20yrs later. It's humorous in a silly way, the puzzles are smart and inventive and while some take a bit of thinking outside the box they are not as obtuse as anything found in the Myst series (although I love that series as well).

The adventure genre is on it's way back with classics like this, Monkey Island 2 Lechuck's Revenge already released, the new Tales of Monkey Island series and the new Sam and Max games. Now bring back an updated version of Grim Fandango and I'll be quite happy.

The original Secret of Monkey Island was the first video game I ever beat as a child. With its sly wit, lovable characters and hilarious story, it was little wonder why I considered it one of the greatest video games of all time. Now with the releases of the Special Edition, Lucasarts has given a whole new generation of gamers the opportunity to experience Guybrush Threepwood in all his original glory. The updated graphics are beautiful, the voice acting is spot on and the controls, although a bit cumbersome compared to a typical mouse point and click game, are simple and responsive. In an age of explosions, killtaculars, and headshots this game is a refreshing yet nostalgic breath of fresh air. Don't get me wrong, I love a fast paced FPS or an epic RPG as much as the next gamer, but for those who want to sit back, relax and enjoy a mug of grog for a few hours, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is for you.

This game is a classic adventure game that most hardcore adventurers have already played. I found myself reverting back to the older version (using page down) to get through it. The Special Edition is full of technical issues that should have been solved before they tried to put this game back out. There are many user interface problems that make it unplayable in the Special Edition mode. If you have $10 to waste and love frustration with interface controls then you will love it.

I didn't know much about this Game
Except all the Buzz it received back in the day
When it arrived on Xbox Live I figured
Why not
Bottom Line it's a Point and Click game (Which i never understood)
I'm not sure how it can be called a Game it's not much fun
A Adventure Game in my eyes Are titles like Zelda & Castlevania.
One Positive remark this version has gotten a HUGE Face lift (The Original Graphics for this game aren't Bad But, very dated)
The Studio did a Great job re-making it!!!!!!

If you are looking for a easy 200 achievement points look else where
You really have to earn some of them!
The reply value is low to say the least

As far as The Graphics and V/O 9.5/10
As far as it being a fun game It's barley a game 5/10