The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition

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.

The Secret of Monkey Island is one of those classic point and click adventure games that were hugely successful on PCs in the 90s, and that belong to a genre that was kind of forgotten as technology advanced and changed the games that always entertained us. So, when adventures returned to activity with the success of Telltale's games, it naturally reignited the flame and curiosity I had to seek more experiences with this genre, and then I saw in The Secret of Monkey Island, considered one of the great pearls of the adventrures, the opportunity to enter the universe of LucasArts games and I can say with certainty that I understand all the cult appeal that this title has. I loved everything here, from the puzzles that make you think outside the box to the sarcastic humor with occasional fourth wall breaks that were brilliantly fitted by its writers. It is worth remembering that this is the special edition, a remake that contains updated graphics and menus, which even remove the famous and nostalgic box of verbs, and I particularly liked that, giving more space to the scenarios and redone art that in my opinion made the game very beautiful, remembering that you can switch to the classic graphics just by pressing F10 at any time. I highly recommend!!!

I did not play this when it first came out so everything I write is based on this particular version. I understand that some people think it did a terrible job. As far as I can tell the experience that this offered when the original came out is completely intact; you just press F10 and that is what you receive. This is incredibly funny and it's one of those comedy games that appreciates that in addition to delivering jokes it can also have the player do something that is inherently comedic. Two minutes into this I knew that I was going to love it when I was able to attempt a conversation with a dog. Not one that speaks English mind you it barks and growls and so can you. It features basically every single type of comedy that it at all is able to with a lot of verbal wit similar to Blackadder. As someone who finds it too limiting these days I greatly appreciate the multi-part puzzles in this where you have to go to a bunch of different locations like over half a dozen on at least one occasion, many with characters for you to engage with etc. There are definitely some times where you're stuck with moon logic. Overall I do prefer the ones where you can figure stuff out without that sort of thing but I do respect that this was something that was true of a number of these from back then. From what I understand, basically the idea was that a friend group could cooperate on solving it. You'd split up and attempt different things and then compare notes in order to get all the way through it. The user interface here is not as smooth as that of the Curse of Monkey Island which came out 12 years before this did. I realized that it came out seven years after the original version of this but this is a Special Edition. They changed some things in a major way. I would say that one is the Goldilock Zone. A perfect mix of streamlining for accessibility and letting you actually solve stuff rather than just having you click on things until eventually it works out.

Played the original over 2 decades ago. The art and voice acting are top notch, and the game looks like I thought it did way back then. I can't wait for my kid to experience this for the first time in the next 2 years, the same way my dad frustratingly did to me.