Return to Monkey Island

I'm not generally a fan of point and click games but I completed Monkey Island 1 & 2 back in the 90's (no audio back then, just subtitles and pixelated graphics) and fell in love with the series. When i heard a new sequel was close to release, I had been put off by reading the reviews about the art direction but decided to take a punt anyway and i'm so glad i did. I've just completed this one too, It plays and feels the same as when i played as a kid, it has all the humour, tricky puzzles and flows brilliantly. I really do hope they make more.

I know it's all about marketing but putting cynic women everywhere is truly boring, it's that kind of humor that only the average American misfit can get. I understood you want to sell games to every gender but you can't literally substitute every man with antisocial women with testosterone. Almost all the characters are basically men with the aspect of women, even the pirates. That kind cynicism isn't even funny. The secret of politically correct island...

I played the old Monkey Island and Indiana Jones games when I was a kid. I expected from this game that it brings back the old memories, tells a funny and engaging story and resolves the mistery around the secret of monkey island. It did all that and more. I was satisfied with the ending, of course highly subjective. I think the developers did a great job in preparing the player for it, leaving hints in various dialogues. Art style, besides the nose of Guybrush, is also very nice imho. And I remember humming to many of the music scores, sound design seemed very good overall. I enjoyed as well how they focused on the similarities between Le Chuck and Guybrush. Both being obsessed with the Secret of Monkey Island. They both take advantage of people without caring for the consequences, Le Chuck doing it the evil way, and Guybrush the goofy way.

As a 13 years old who played all monkey island games, i really enjoyed to meet again Guybrush Threepwood in this last adventure. I hope to see him in a future adventure 😙

Well having played it I can say with confidence that this game... Is not bad. Is it good though? Well that depends on you and how much nostalgia you feel towards the original games. In my case it's a lot and that helped elevate the game in my eyes thanks to the many allusions to former entries. But as its own, the game it was ok. Not great, not terrible. But it's still a Monkey Island game with everything that implies, and I can't help but love it. There is however one point of contention, Some have described the lack of moon logic in the puzzles, as a positive thing. I have to disagree, I feel that the quirky, nonsensical solutions to some of the puzzles, are very much part of the series' identity and of what makes it charming, and I think that doing away with them entirely is a disservice to it. I also feel obligated to discuss the ending. By the time I played the game, it had been out for a few weeks so I had fair warning from spoiler free reviews about it. So when I finally saw it, I was fully prepared and felt no surprise whatsoever. Yet, even with this advance warning I still felt disappointed. I accepted it with resignation and stoicism. That this was all we were going to get. After all, Gilbert does have a long history of doing this same thing to many of his games'. Then I read the developer's note that unlocks after completing the game and... it all sort of clicked together. The core concept of this game and Guybrush's journey reflects Gilbert's own personal experiences and career as a game developer. There is a lot of meta going on here, when you look at it from that perspective, starting even with the title, Just like Guybrush can't go back to his glory days, you can never truly return to Monkey Island or that magical feeling when you first played this game all those years ago. It's not a satisfying ending but it is an ending. As a swan song for the series, it might not be great, but it's good enough.