The Curse of Monkey Island™

I have always loved the Monkey Island game series. From the first to the last it has been one of the most clever, witty, and amazingly written games I've played. The humor is incredible and consistent throughout game play, dialogue, puzzle solving, and items collected. The characters and stories seemlessly tie to each other from game to game and remain true to their introduction in game 1. All of that is reason alone to play Curse of Monkey Island. However, specifically - the graphics of this game are amazing! The storyline is unpredictable! It's just a great overall game and will have you wanting to try the others.

The first with "modern" graphics, this one is packed with clever silliness everywhere you look. My criticism of some series in the adventure genre (Syberia comes to mind) is that the only things you can interact with are those necessary to the plot plus a few like perpetually locked doors. This is the opposite---you can choose to breeze straight through, but you can also honor the brilliance of the writers by interacting with everything or taking the long route through conversations and laugh yourself silly. Great puzzles, many requiring some thought, a little like a funnier version of The Longest Journey. If I could give it a 6, I would.

Probably my favorite of the monkey island games, and one of the best adventure games of all time. Still gorgeous, and an amazing must play adventure game. Also the best insult sword fights.

I have always loved this game. The puzzles, the pop-culture, the humor, the voice-acting, this is the best game ever! A few of the puzzles are obtuse, but they are all logical, just be patient and you will get this game!

A lot of people seem to feel this game doesn't hold up to the first two, but I just don't see it- it's all great. The puzzles, the animations, the voice acting, the humor, the mood. Hearing the characters voiced for the first time was amazing when it first came out, but just having played the Special Editions of the first two games which added voice acting, I can say it's not mere nostalgia that makes me love MI3. I think it may be the funniest of the first three games, it has tons of memorable moments, the puzzles are tricky but not unfair, the characters are absolutely glowing with personality, and the ship combat mechanic is a fun new addition to the typical adventure game formula, while also revisiting the insult swordfighting from the first game (which is a fun enough idea that I don't mind doing it again). I suppose one could make the argument that it doesn't include enough of Elaine and LeChuck, the former being turned to gold for most of the game and the latter just shouting in a few cutscenes, and extending the end areas of the game would have helped with that- and maybe by the third part of the series it's becoming a little too in-jokey and self-referential- but I actually enjoyed the attention to continuity and liked the new characters enough that I didn't feel it was lacking in any way. The graphics are a little blocky and pixelated-looking now, and could benefit from a remaster similar to Full Throttle's, but still hold up for the most part. Highly recommended, and in my opinion a high point of the series, which would plummet into being outright bad in the next game (which I won't even be reviewing because I refuse to re-buy it), and rise back to mediocrity in the Telltale series, but never again reach the heights of the original trilogy... well, maybe. I haven't played Return to Monkey Island yet and I have high hopes. In the meantime Curse is absolutely worth getting- even if you don't end up liking it as much as the first two, it's a good time.