The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition

The Secret Of Monkey Island is probably my favorite adventure game of all time. This special edition, while clearly with its heart in the right place, misses the mark with one oddly bad decision. The artstyle of the new graphics are downright ugly. This is in no way a dealbreaker in itself since you thankfully have the option to switch back and forth between this visual abomination and the beautiful pixelart of the original release with just the press of a button. What unfortunately is lost when you choose the preferred oldschool graphics is the voice acting. That's a big loss since these voices actually are really good and adds a lot of enjoyment to the game. This is fixed in the special edition of the sequel but is tied to what version of the graphics you choose to use in this release. That's pretty much the only problem to be found here though so if you are looking for a cool, fun and exciting adventure you won't be to disappointed by this special edition.

Monkey Island was a great game and its still great. I really liked the remake. You can switch back and forth between the old style and the new, so that's cool if you find the new stuff off-putting. Yes the control can be a little bit weird, but so where the originals, and it did not detract from the overall experience. I played through it with my kids and the whole family had a great time and the updated graphics, awesome voice acting, and new hints system all helped make the experience better and more accessible for my young brood. Its the second greatest adventure game I've ever played!

First of all I have to say I bought this game despite all the one star warnings, and I was pleasently surprised. I found it to be not bad at all. I do agree that new version could have made the effort to make voice work for the older version, and that the action menu in the new version is a little hazzle (although it's easy to memorize and get the hang of the quickperform action keys as you go along) To me the new graphics is allright. With these newer graphics all characters have a more concrete look, and so it takes away the imagination you had to apply to the blurry graphics in the original version. In this new version Guybrush looks like a total dork to me. A nobody that tries to rise and prosper. That works for me. I always felt that Guybrush was like that, the way the other characters in the game talked to him. Always getting his name wrong, saying things like he looked more like a flooring inspector than a pirate etc. I'm not saying I liked all the new praphics, there are some elements that disagree with me, but others that are good and outbalances the overall experience. The best thing I liked about the new version was the spoken dialogue. It's really good quality and sounds like professional artists that do the voiceover. I find the important looking pirates telling jokes and laughing particulary funny. "Don't forget! X Marks the spot! Har! Har! Har!" If you can live with the new graphics and don't get dissapointed that there is no voice for the old version I would check it out.

Monkey Island 2 is even better, but I really love this one as well.

I guess Point-and-click adventures just don't fit me. I played this for about 14 hours and at least 10 hours of them I had no clue what to do next or I was travelling to other areas (by boat) to test some of my ideas on how to progress further in the story. The story itself could have been told in less than an hour. The game contained some funny jokes/statements but overall it's just too much for me. Some of the sceneces and dialogs that are supposed to be funny are actually shallow & annoying. The possibility to use every verb on every object is really distracting. In some situations I just ended up trying all possibilities no matter how weird they are (because some combinations are actually really weird and also illogical). I never played the original game and I was born in 1995. Maybe if I had been born earlier and had played the original game back then I might have liked it.