Adventure gaming was my first true love, and Monkey Island my very first in the genre. The first two games even helped my brother learn how to read.
Controls, animation, sound and art direction are perfect. Nothing could be improved, nothing should be changed. Setting and story are near perfect. Setting is very creepy and evocative, but incomplete. Story appears there, but doesn't ultimately come to anything. I don't mind vague or opaque, The Witness stayed with my long after I finished playing it. And while I did enjoy this journey, I did not understand this boy dropping into the woods any better than I did when I first started playing. Maybe you don't think that's a problem, but I did. Gameplay is further from perfect. The puzzles never build upon each other. While most are interesting, they all feel discrete. Once they introduced the mind control helmet, and then plugging in a humanoid you were controlling into ANOTHER mind control helmet, I thought the puzzles would start to really have fun and let loose with this mechanic. But they never did. I still wish I could give it 4.5 stars. Better than Limbo and highly recommended.
There are really some magical moments in the early game. The duel with spider stretched out repeatedly over the first part of the game is something special. But the early game gives way to a much less interesting world of buzzsaws and such and no great enemy to battle like the spider. The world unfortunately, got less interesting the longer I played. That said, the game is still well crafted, beautiful, and worth a play.
As far as the prototype, seems like a clean engine. I’m glad you could disable the hotspot chime because good God was that annoying. I’m hoping that was just for the developers to track bugs and that it doesn’t end up in any game… ever. But this demo-let also just reminded me how disappointed in Thimbleweed park I was. Unlike Monkey Island 2 when I yearned to explore Melee island when I rode the elevator up (but wasn’t allowed to) I had very little desire to re-explore this setting. Oh look, I'm playing as the boring programmer girl. Oh hey forgettable diner lady! Oh my god, its the less interesting fortune teller woman! Aside from the music, there’s nothing really memorable about the game. I know its free so, whatever, play it. Just know that it won’t be that fun, and you’ll only make yourself a few minutes closer to death after do so.
As other have noted the graphics and atmosphere are excellent, but the gameplay and storytelling leave something to be desired. The mechanics are bogged down by a lack of unifying interface and decent notifications. The story is completely nonsensical. For the life of me I never understand why foreign studio don’t just hire an English major to take a look at their translation and ask “hey, does this make sense?” Because if this studio did, that student could have replied, “No. No it does not.” Also, there’s no morality system or character interaction so instead of burying the characters that die, save some time and follow the advice of my heading.
Monkey Island was the first game I ever played, and it even helped my little brother learn how to read. I played every Lucas Arts Adventure game that was made thereafter and I still think Monkey Island 2 is the pinnacle of adventure gaming. I wanted to love this game, but it was just ok. The graphics and the music are top notch (though the locales are slightly uninteresting). The updated character movement and scrolling struck the right balance between keeping the nostalgia but keeping pace with our 21st century internal clock. Also, if you've seen twin peaks, it does a decent job of capturing that feel. The bad? The tone of the game is all over the place, neither funny enough nor containing enough depth. The characters are mostly one-note, unlikable, or uninteresting. And as has been noted in other reviews, the breaking of the fourth wall is distracting, and lazily tries to patch up holes in the plot that would have been better served actually being written well. But the absolute strangest part of the game is controlling 5 different characters who are working together but don't know that they're working together because you're just controlling them. Adventure games have always had a unique conceit. You ARE Roger Wilco, Guybrush, Manny, or Graham. But you're also not those characters, perhaps you're just a part of their brain so when you try and combine two things they can tell you (or that part of themselves) "That doesn't seem to work." But with multiple characters moving and handing each other things for no good reason in their world, this feels especially strange. Maybe this won't bother you, but it was distracting to me. If it's on sale, worth a purchase if you're feeling nostalgic, but not a new classic by any stretch.
