The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition

Loved the original, love the remake. The possibility of switching between old/new graphics and UI is really cool. Artwork is great and in my opinion is as closest as they could get to the original. UI can be a bit clumsy at certain points (grog mugs part) but it most certainly isn't a deal-breaker.

a+

Everything about these games reaches near perfection. The characters, humor, music, all of it is impeccable. Even the most bitter person out there will find something to laugh at, as the humor is firmly tongue in cheek. The only gripe I have is that the art style isn't quite as good as the remake of Monkey Island 2, as I'm guessing they had a little more time/money to work on that one. Still, minor squabbles aside, you will not find a better adventure game out there. Perfect for kids,perfect for adults, perfect for monkeys.

In the worst case, you get the SOMI experience by playing in classy mode. This means witty dialogue, good puzzles and wonderfully creative scenes - there is a reason why MI became a series and a classic and that reason is the first part. The remake adds voice acting on part with COMI, a less clunky interface and a new, high resolution art style that is mostly inspired by the cartoonish look of COMI as well. Die hard fans are of course shocked by this transition, but I think it fits the game much better than the trying-to-be-realistic sprites and especially character close-ups of the original. Also there were more enough details in the old EGA/VGA version to now fill a finely drawn SVGA/XGA screen and the remake also scales resonable well beyond this up to WQXGA. Sadly the same cannot be said of animation: The original engine only supported linear movement, limited walking animations and 0 facial changes and one will not get anything beyond that in the remake. 2nd failure is the lack of voice acting in classic mode - one cannot enjoy the old graphics in long dialogues because one has to constantly read subtitles. But thats small stuff, the only serious issue is the interface. SOMI relied on a dozen verbs, most of which could only be used in very few situations and now these are all placed in a scroll through list without any context sensitivity. While one can easily scroll back and forth to use the same command over and over again, this gets quite a nuissance when there multiple objects each of which might be pushable. Or pullable. Or usable? Or... - it gets even worse when trying to combine objects, though the new inventory is less clumsy than the old.

I bought this game as soon as it was on sale because, well... It marked my childhood, I had to have it. Of course, I didn't touch it for long because I already finished it almost 30 years ago (as I said, I just have to have it). Then I didn't like GOG's version of Loom and wanted to check this one too. As soon as I started the game, something felt odd: the user interface is not the original one (I don't even consider the new graphics, to me they're just b*shit), it's the update with the pictures of the objects in the inventory instead of the text. I mean, if you didn't play the game back in the days, you will definitely enjoy it, even with the new graphics (after all, it's the best adventure game ever, you have to!), but don't buy it out of nostalgia. Just don't. In general, you shouldn't buy any of the Lucas Arts's (now Disney's) classic adventures: most of the games from that era are now abandonware, but these ones they charge you money because, you know... retro-gaming is cool nowadays... I understand new graphics and such could justify the price, but as a nostalgia player I can't care less about it: I just want the original game without have to spend half a day tweaking DOSBox, ScummVM or whatever. Moreover, many of these games didn't even receive an overhaul, so why they're charging money for? They're just making profit out of nowhere. Just don't buy them. I got fooled twice, you don't have to.