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This user has reviewed 9 games. Awesome! You can edit your reviews directly on game pages.
Monkey Island™ 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge™

Decent remake of a great game

Firstly, let's get this once and for all: Monkey Island 2, alongside with Indiana Jones and Fate of Atlantis, can be the best adventure games LucasArts ever created and definitely one of the best adventure games ever. Even if you don't agree with it, I think nobody will argue that MI2 is a very nice game worth checking by every fan of the genre. So, now, when we sorted it out, let's talk exclusively about the remake. After an honestly disappointing MI1 remake, I didn't have high hopes for this one - and I was wrong. The art style of the original made nice transition to high definition, voiceovers are really good and done by people known by any Monkey Island fan, and the new "coin" verb system, similar to the one from Curse of Monkey Island, works well. (By editing the INI file, you can enable classic verb mode - I recommend you to search how to do it.) There is a bunch of small disappointing moments, though. The animation is the same as in the original, which feels choppy when used in HD game, and some face expressions are just not right. In the Rapp Scallion close-up, the animation is actually WORSE and has less frames than in the original, which feels really off. The live music is... not all that great; sometimes it works and fits the game greatly, but in some parts, like in Booty Island, the original soundtrack is better and more clear. There are also some loading screens between some parts of the game which hurt the seamless nature of the original. Finally, audio commentary prompts are quite obtrusive and can't be hidden without turning off entire audio commentary. But, overall, this Special Edition can be the best way for newcomers to play this game, and long-time fans can be interested in it too. Remastering work done great, and some oddities do not hurt the game that much.

41 gamers found this review helpful
Tales of Monkey Island: Complete Season

Great, but flawed Monkey Island game

First of all, I have to say that it is a very impressive game in the Monkey Island series. The developers not only created a good adventure game by its own, but also managed to capture the spirit of old games (especially Monkey Island 2 and The Curse of Monkey Island), bringing back a lot of familiar elements but making quite many fresh things. The story is just great, the new characters are memorable, the interesting twists on recurring characters are well-made... and this game has the best Insult Swordfighting system ever. The game, however, has its flaws caused by episodic structure and budget reasons. While the story is solid and ever-progressing, the quality and the pace of the game varies heavily from chapter to chapter. In some of chapters, there are a bunch of tedious fetch quests and labyrinth navigation, which are not so awful as they may seem, but which really look like a filler and kinda cripple the excitement from playing the game. There are a bunch of technical problems with the game, like missing animations, skipped voice-over line and improperly switched scene. The game seems to had no extensive proof-reading too - if you are playing the game with subtitles, be ready to missed punctuation signs, syllables or even the whole chunks of the sentence sometimes. But do not be afraid! This is still a very good game and a must-play for every Monkey Island, and for me, it is the best experience I've had since I finished The Curse of Monkey Island. I highly recommend this game, but, still, beware you about the lack of polish.

9 gamers found this review helpful
Beneath a Steel Sky (1994)

Huge diappointment after great beginning

Several years ago, I was very fond of two things: dystopias and point'n'click adventures. Naturally, I'd decided to play Beneath a Steel Sky, which was a free, well-received dystopian cyberpunk point'n'click adventure. How could I resist? I downloaded it, started to play, but for whatever reason dropped it in the middle. Yesterday, browsing through my backlog, I decided to finish it at last - and now, after the credits, I understand why I dropped it back then - it just wasn't good. Beneath a Steel Sky has an amazing introduction (especially in the floppy version) and a quite good final part, but the game sandwiched between them is incoherent and just not very good. It's literally like a closed sandwich. The game switches from one style to another, tries to be funny and dead serious/dramatic at the same time and overall doesn't make justice to its plot and universe. Even the final part is far from flawless. There are a lot of cheap deaths in this part of the game, and if you will try to avoid them, you'll miss important bits of the story. The ending is anti-climatic - not in the good, Monkey Island 2 way, but rather in an unfinished Curse of Monkey Island way. And the "Virtual Theatre" system, which gave the NPCs the ability to walk and function freely and worked so awesome in Lure of the Temptress, feels sloppy and inappropriate here. So, in addition to "save games", we have "speed slider games": you will really need to tinker with the game speed slider to skip the long off-screen NPC animations/movements or to pass through quite bad timed sections. If you still want to play the game, don't use the GOG version. Revolution Software liberated the floppy version too (while GOG one is CD/talkie one). The original lacks digitised and narrated Dave Gibbons' comic (which you should read anyway, as well as security manuals) but also lacks very hit-and-miss voice acting and butchered intro sequence of CD version.

2 gamers found this review helpful
Simon the Sorcerer
This game is no longer available in our store