5 years after my first playthrough, and 19 years after release, LucasArts have improved on their greatest game!
Telltale's Monkey Island series worked out extremely well, and took the characters and plot in very interesting directions, making Tales of Monkey Island one of my top-half favourites in the series. The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, however, while enjoyable as a game, suffered a little in the remake department. From the first game's remake, I got the sence that LucasArts had moved on from Monkey Island given that some of the art had an unfinished look to it (pixels still present, inconsistent art styles, inconsistent quality), and the voice direction seemed slightly off from what many of us fans may have had in mind, the voice casting was spot on, though, and given that LucasArts made the effort to bring back all cast from the previous games was very good of them. The score was also fantastic and proved that Jesse Harlin was more than capable of adapting this classic score.
While I liked Monkey Island: Special Edition more for the fact that it happened rather than for what it was, there was a gaping hole between Monkey Island 1 and 3 now, meaning that Monkey Island 2 was now the only game in the series not to have the voice treatment and high-quality audio and visuals. Before March 2010, I decided, "Ok, if LucasArts can find it in their classic, old-school hearts to remake this game, I'll respect them as a company forever, even if the majority of their modern games are complete tripe." And lo and behold, Monkey Island 2: Special Edition was announced at GDC in March 2010!
Now it's here, and I couldn't be much happier with it.
Sorry if this review is a little longwinded so far, but this game has been a long time coming, and I'm treating this review as a sequel of sorts to my review of the original game five years ago, to this day, the only game I have reviewed on Gamespot. Here's all the points I listed from my original review, and how I feel they have been adapted in the Special Edition:
2005 - I think this game is the second best in the series (Coming really close to The Curse of Monkey Island).
2010 - I have developed a whole new appreciation for Monkey Island 2 these past few years, though Curse is still as excellent as ever, putting Monkey Island 2: Special Edition as my favourite title in the series seems right to me!
2005 - There are two versions of the game, a lite version (which is the medium version) and the normal version which is very hard.
2010 - The Special Edition only comes with the normal version of the game, though if you know where to look on the internet, you can find a patch that forces the game to run in easy mode. All of the exclusive easy mode dialogue and easy mode material has been made, so nothing missing. For players that are stuck, they can use either a hint system, or an object highlighting system to guide them in the right direction.
2005 - But still this is one of the funniest and best games ever made.
2010 - This still stands, I found a whole new level of comedy and enjoyment after playing the Special Edition, the strong voice direction of this game really helps.
2005 - My favourite characters are Guybrush, LeChuck, Wally and Largo LaGrande.
2010 - Love these characters and had a lot of fun interacting with them. Dominic Armato gives his best Guybrush performance yet in this game, and Earl Boen brings LeChuck to life in his usual brilliant performance. James Arnold Taylor as Largo LaGrande grew on me overtime, despite my dislike of Largo's voice at first. Neil Ross returns as the voice of Wally after 13 years since playing the character in Curse, however, his performance is significantly different to the one in Curse, in MI2, it feels a lot more like an exagerrated high voice, as opposed to a fairly normal british voice in Curse. However, it was still a good acting performance, the same can be said about almost every character, except for Kate Capsize. She comes across as very bored during most of her deliveries, and seems to have no idea of the context of her dialogue.
2005 - The music was fantastic (my favourite musics were the Closing Credits, LeChucks Theme, Largos Theme, Captain Kates boat and of course the Monkey Island theme!)
2010 - The music is just as well adapted in this game as in the first. The Monkey Island 2 Theme sounds wonderful, though there is no intro (dancing monkeys) to go along with it in SE mode. Largo's Theme sounds wonderful with live instuments, as does the many variations of LeChuck's Theme. The closing credits medely sounds great and Kate's Boat sounds great with steel drums. The only point where the music seems to suffer is on Booty Island, in which many of the pieces of music are either out of tune (intentional or not), or incorrectly used (the theme from Ville de'la Booty is missing and replaced with the Mardi Gras theme heard later). The iMuse system has been faithfully recreated in the SE and sounds almost as good as the MIDI based iMuse system, especially in Woodtick.
So, in short, excellent remake. This game has proven LucasArts as a company commited to their fanbase, from fixing problems in the first Special Edition to being so faithful to the original game underneath the Special Edition (which can be accessed at the push of the F1 button). However, this game is not the most complete version of the game. The SE removes Guybrush's "Nice ___" lines and replaces them all with "Nice." A few minor music technical faults are noticed from time to time (LucasArts recently fixed the most serious fault with a patch though, and that's the famous "Bone Song"), a few of the more complex iMuse transitions are missing, but congratulations to LucasArts for even attempting to pull off the complex system.
So, aside from being slightly incomplete in terms of some dialogue being changed (copyright or non-voice advantage reasons), this game is basically a near-perfect version of an already near-perfect game.
9.5/10
:)
Oh, and one more thing:
2005 - One of my other favourite LucasArts games is Sam and Max, which I have just started playing and I am really enjoying it.
2010 - Finished Hit the Road this year. Good game. :)