Monkey Island: SE Review [360]

16 Jul 2009 at 11:01:55 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360, PC)

Having played through the entirety of Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, with all of its shiny new graphics and voice acting, there remains one important question:

Why the hell has it taken LucasArts so long to re-release this masterpiece, remastered or not?

The Secret of Monkey Island, when first released almost twenty years ago, was exactly that: a masterpiece. The graphics were pixellated, but everything else – the art style, the deliciously obtuse puzzles, the fantastic dialogue, and even the incredibly memorable music which, back then, was coming through things that could hardly be called sound systems – were nothing short of magical. Players joined Guybrush Threepwood on his quest to become a mighty pirate, which eventually led to rescuing the damsel and stopping an evil ghost pirate's plans, all of which were nicely lampooned by the game at one point or another. You sailed the seven seas, found treasure, and got into swordfights... but none of them quite work out as they do in the movies (with the possible exception of the swordfights, which are based far more on using insults or appropriate comebacks to throw your opponent off balance.) More importantly, they were all funny.

It played out as a point-and-click adventure with a wicked sense of humour. Even having finished the original game more times than I can remember, some sections still make me laugh, particularly the scene in the Governor's Mansion in which both the controls and the view are taken away from the player who only has an idea of what's going on based on what pops up on the action bar. Puzzles range from the logical – use shovel on X to dig up the treasure – to the logical-but-bizarre, like the uses for the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. And yes, I'm being very, very careful not to spoil anything.

This is Monkey Island, make no mistake. If all you've been waiting for is another release of Monkey Island so that you can get your hands on it, then you can safely go and spend your money, and be assured that what you're getting is the original, unchanged game. Yes, there are high-resolution graphics and voice acting, but crucially neither of these are necessary. The “new” version appears to have been built on the old codebase, meaning that with a tap of the Back button, you can flip between new and old instantly, no matter where you are, and the old version is very much what it says on the tin. You've got the old graphics, the old interface, and no voice acting whatsoever. It is nothing short of the original Monkey Island, with no changes at all.

The new version changes all of these things, but is still to all intents and purposes the same game. The dialogue is identical – right down to asking people about Loom, which I'm sure will confuse plenty of new players – as are the puzzles. The tweaked interface isn't the greatest thing that's ever hit point-and-click adventures, but it's functional and works well enough on 360 controllers. Your action bar has moved to the very bottom of the screen, and A defaults to the Walk To option, while B is the right-mouse button option, automatically doing whatever the most logical action is. Hitting B on a door will open it; on a person, it'll start a conversation. Tapping the left and right bumper/shoulder buttons bring up the verb menu and the inventory, both of which are 3x3 boxes that don't take up too much room on the screen.

All ...

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