As an aside: The "in-jokes" option seems wholly unnecessary to me (I say, "leave 'em in") but there's no real harm in having the option. This game has some good parts. Ransome the Clown was funny. It was great to play an old-fashioned point-and-click adventure with nice graphics. The opening location is terrific. A murder mystery should be a fun plot to solve but sadly, the game is ruined with a silly, terrible ending. I hope we can get better writing the in the future. I would love to continue supporting these games but not with such an ending.
I'm a fan of the "point-and-click" adventure genre but I had never played this game before. I'm reviewing this as a new player. -- PROS -- The game starts out well and sets up a fun adventure. The artwork is excellent and the animation is sufficient. Initially, exploring the world is exciting. The game features some witty, British humour. I enjoyed the version with speech but I wish it allowed subtitles, too. * The first third of the game (approximately) is enjoyable. * British humour. * Good voice acting, especially Chris Barrie. * Beautiful artwork. -- CONS -- Overall, the game suffers from lack of testing and taking time to fix the issues. There are lots of things that needed explanation and polish. Simple additions would have made illogical puzzles into sensible ones. Puzzles are also ruined due to interaction bugs and inconsistencies. E.g. sometimes you use "Give" and at other times, you must go through dialogue options. Sequence puzzles become VERY tedious, as you have to wait for dialogue, animation, etc. every time you try an idea. As you progress closer towards the end of the game, things become more and more anachronistic and feel less complete. The end feels rushed and lazy, like they needed to just get things wrapped up. * Too many unexplained story points and puzzles. * Too many "sequence" puzzles. * Too many delays, like waiting for Simon to take items from his hat. * Interactions are inconsistent. * The ending was disappointing. I did experience a couple of crashes, too.
This is a first-impression writing. I may update it. This version suffers from many problems, some of which are more subjective than others. The good news is that you can press F10 and stay in the classic mode. The bad news? Well... 1. I like the voice acting but it's not available in classic mode. Lame. 2. You can't click to advance dialogue. Lame. 3. I don't like some of the choices for the "Special Edition" style. In particular, I strongly dislike their version of Guybrush. The original artwork (e.g. Guybrush and Elaine, at the end) are wonderful pieces of art. I wish they had imitated those. 4. The "Special Edition" interface is horrible. The verb menu is clunky, as is the pointer-selection alternative. 5. Some points feel very cheap, such as the dock scene at the beginning. You really couldn't afford a little dual-scrolling here? Come on. It looks so flat at lame that the original version feels better. And it's a shame because some of the art is nice. Sadly, I can't imagine playing this remake over the original. That said in stark contrast the the "HD" version of "Day of the Tentacle", which gets everything right. Among other things, it allows the player to choose which UI to use. Summary: "Day of the Tentacle HD" shows you a brilliant update to the original. Buy it now... twice. Someone out there needs a copy and you can gift it to them. "Monkey Island: SE" doesn't get *everything* wrong but there's little here to enjoy. If you already can play the original via ScummVM, you should probably stick to that.
This game has a good and interesting premise. It also has a pretty good tactical-battle system. Unfortunately, it lacks the story (that is, the heart) and the design to make it a good game. The Story Side: As others have mentioned, the story ends up feeling pretty empty. Your choices seem to matter little and in the end, you learn almost nothing about what's going on. The game seems very linear and it would have been nice to at least feel like there were a few choices in the game that mattered to the story. The lack of RPG elements in the game also hurts this side of it. The Tactical Side: On the tactical side, the game could have just been a series of battle scenarios. The battles don't connect well with each other, or the story. They might as well be separate maps with little to no story. There is no way to manage your units between maps. No way to feel like you are progressing. You don't get a sense that the numbers matter between maps. There are some places where your units carry over between parts of multi-map scene but this only emphasizes the bigger problem that you don't get that elsewhere. A good strategy/tactical game would give you a way to buy / mass troops between battles. It would let you heal wounds, plan attacks or make decisions on where to go next. You get none of that here. Overall, it's a good try and there is some good potential but the game is unfulfilling. By the end, you can't help feeling disappointed.
