You need to collect/produce resources to fix your engines. At first resources are near your base, but as you gather them your crew must walk longer. Upgrading the weather station gives you some more reaction time to keep the crew inside if the temperatures drop to far. Educating the crew is important, so a trip gives you the maximum amount of resources. Sadly after the initial hump of who does what, there is no strategic element left. People gather parts, the ship breaks everyday a random part and artificially lengthens your stay. Your crew sees illusions and spouts random nonsense. In the later half of the game some random red beams cover your screen from the AI that spouts random nonsense too - none of which seems to have an effect on the game play, Like some browser game of the 2000: Good for half a day, but no replay value beyond that.
To be fair: not all games age well. Especially adventure games from the 90s tried to stretch game time by killing you off unexpectedly or allowing you to paint yourself into a corner. I'm all the more impressed with this game: It tells you to save often and while you can miss information or go down the wrong way it also will tell bluntly enough what you just did was wrong. The puzzle are more than fair and can be solved with logic. There are timed parts, but you get enough of a head start to find a solution. There is an strategic space-battle portion, but even there you can decide on the difficulty for yourself and let the computer resolve it on it's own. The Worldbuilding is good to great. It suffers a bit from a TLA-syndrome (three lettered acronyms), but other than that it's (mostly) hard sci-fi with no glaring plot holes. All in all a pleasant, round experience.
Monkey Island is still a nice time sink if you like slightly pirate related (miss)adventures - but story wise I'm waiting for Ron Gilbert to get his shot at the true ending of the trilogy and the REAL secret of monkey island. The puzzels are mostly enjoyable but you need to walk a lot around a lot - a mechanic never done right in 3D adventure games. The Camera jumps around and you don't know where you can walk to. Concerning the Ending [Minor Spoiler]: Why does it end like that? Why can't they let guybrush just die already? Every learn-a-piraty-fight-technique puzzle, every get-voodoo-ingredients puzzle has been done to death now. He could have died a hero but know he is just a zombie cash cow for more slightly pirate related fantasy games. The game is not bad - but it being named "Monkey Island" is just for the money. The bloodline to the original is thin now and gets ever thinner with every new game.
The good: It does look very nice. The places you visit almost look like a myst game. The background musik fits and puzzles are not too simple or too hard. The titular game mechanic is interesting . The bad: It is quite short. If you play adventures often, you will need 3-4 hours tops. There is kind of a story, but the game begins and ends too abruptly, giving you only a glimpse of a wondrous world. Beware: color blind may have a disadvantage. Buy if it's on sale or you have an rainy evening to get past.
