When I was a young boy, my mother made me watch Forest Gump. That day, I remember Gump’s mother telling him never to tell a lie (or was that Pinocchio?). Well today, I am going to open this review by following Momma Gump’s advice by being completely honest. I have never played a Monkey Island game for more than an hour, nor have I ever liked, cared for, or thought about any adventure game other than Shenmue. What’s worse? The only time I did play an entry of the Monkey Island franchise, it was Escape From Monkey Island (the only one not made by my hero, Tim Schafer) on a bet with our (former?) review editor Andy Jackson. Short story: I lost. Will this rebirth be the one to sway me into the adventure game crowd?
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge — Special Edition
Developer: LucasArts
Price: 800 MSP/$9.99
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade (reviewed)/PlayStation Network
If you haven’t already guessed by the title of the review and my opening paragraph, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
Special Edition is a remake of the 1991 classic of the same name (minus the Special Edition part). You control the famous washout of a pirate, Guybrush Threepwood (if their is a joke in that name, I can’t find it) who is attempting to find the legendary treasure known as Big Whoop, win back Governor Elaine’s love, and not be killed by the fearsome, reincarnated ghost pirate LeChuck. Yes, it’s even crazier than it sounds. While the original was a point and click adventure, this remake redesigns the entire control scheme to fit the Xbox 360 controller well. This time around, you can physically control Guybrush with the left analog and you control the “mouse” with the right analog while the right-trigger brings up options via a roulette menu. For the most part, this works very well. However, I found there were a few instances when I found it easier to move by switching into the game’s Classic Mode (achievement unlocked! …Play the game, you’ll get the joke) and using the old-school point and click controls.
Once you adjust to the controls (whether you’re new to the franchise or a long time vet, you’ll need to), you’ll use them and every bit of your thought processes to get through every single type of puzzle and/or fetch quest imaginable. Trust me when I say that no two quests are alike and none of them can be solved by just randomly clicking everywhere. In fact, most of them require a lot of thought and wandering only for something to horribly wrong. If I could sum up my thoughts during most of the gameplay portion of the game, it would be ‘Son of a bitch!’ or a similar ‘God dammit!’ Note, these aren’t the same type of shrieks of anger as you get from playing a shooter on the hardest difficulty. These shrieks are because every time you solve a puzzle, something bad happens to make an hour of work go down the drain. I’m not sure if it was done to lengthen the game or purposely done to drag the point across through broken glass that nothing in the game is as easy as it seems but, either way, I’m convinced Guybrush should never go to Vegas.
However, it is the story where the game truly shines brighter than a sixty watt light-bulb amongst candles. And by story, I don’t mean the heroic tale of Guybrush finding Big Whoop and vanquishing LeChuck. I mean every bit of dialogue leading
up to that. With each fetch quest comes a conversation consisting of some subtle joke or a hilarious after-situation. Whether Guybrush has to beg for a seemingly useless metal bucket or wins a costume that forces him to cross-dress. It’s all very silly, but all of it will make you crack a smile or burst out laughing (pending how tired you are). In fact, the game goes out of its way to let you know this isn’t a serious tale by any means. To give an example, their is a part in the game where Guybrush gets knocked out cold, and dreams his parents turn into ‘cartoony’ skeletons that sing the childish Dry Bones song. It’s all very witty, very clever, and very silly. In fact, if it weren’t for Tim Schafer’s and Ron Gilbert’s writing being so funny, the game would have absolutely no drive what-so-ever.
Since this is a special edition/remake, it comes with many updates and new features. The game now features very modern and very polished HD cartoon graphics as well as full voice acting (reading is for sissies, right?). However, if all of that is disgusting to you and tramples over your childhood, at any given time you can press the back button (I’m assuming select if you’re on a PS3) to bring the game into ‘classic mode’ which gets rid of all the new graphics, voice acting, and controls and brings the game back to what it once was. It’s a neat fan-service, I suppose. However, I feel that this feature is physical proof that the people at LucasArts were too afraid to stray away from the original at all. It really made it so they couldn’t fix my one issue with this game: the difficulty.
Now, I am all for a difficult game. I think all gamers can appreciate a challenge to some degree. However, most difficult games have one thing in common that the entire Monkey Island franchise doesn’t have: a goal. In every difficult game I play, their is some sort of indication as to what I need to do next to progress the story. It may be challenging to do, but I vaguely know what I have to do. With Monkey Island, that isn’t there. Even in the first section, you have to draw some conclusions from the sky. Once you get multiple islands involved, their is just no hope, especially to new comers. Overall, this alienates the audience to people who have played the game before or people who are willing to pull up GameFAQS on demand. The worst part is, it seems as if LucasArts knew exactly what I’m talking about with their final addition that I kept secret until now: a hint button.
Yes, you can hold ‘X’ (or square on a PS3, I’m assuming) to have the game tell you a very vague hint as to what to do next.
Hold it again, it gets a bit more detailed. Hold it once more, and I swear it just quotes a walk-through at the player. I’ll admit, I ended up holding this button many times to the point I felt dependent on this blue button of shame. But, my main issue with this is that it breaks immersion entirely. One of the best things about a good game is a player’s ability to get lost entirely in it. I don’t know about you, but I think the game loses credibility if each and every time I get stuck, God reveals himself to Guybrush and, in just a line of green text, tells me exactly where I need to go and what I need to do there. It seems like this was a very avoidable issue that can be blamed on the fan-service switch to classic mode. Seems like they could’ve bypassed this issue by presenting some new NPC’s that can grant Guybrush some knowledge. Heck, it would’ve even opened up some more witty dialogue options. They could’ve even went to the extreme of putting in 16-bit versions of these new NPC’s in the classic mode. It doesn’t seem like it would’ve been that hard to do and probably would’ve been more fun for both the developers and the players
The voice acting, the graphics, and dialogue are very well done and highly appreciated. And the puzzles, whilst overly difficult to the point of alienation, are all very clever and thought out. It’s a shame that Monkey Island 2 commits gaming’s greatest sin by putting out a remake and forgets to fix any of the pre-existing issues. This isn’t 1991, this is 2010 and a lot of things needed to be fixed.
The Final Word
Everything is as charming as it was in 1991, and the voice acting adds humor where clever text boxes just couldn’t. This kind of creativity is very welcomed this generation. Still, many issues arise from the experience being dated and, thus, alienates newcomers from enjoying the experience. It should be played, but only to those who know what they’re getting into. I almost hate to put a score on this because I did really enjoy it when I wasn’t being led around by hints.
– MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
