A remake of one of the best and most humorous games of all time proves there is life in the Point and Click genre.
You take control of Guybrush Threepwood a young man with aspirations of becoming a pirate. Guybrush must use various commands such as Walk to, Talk to, Open, Use etc to manipulate his inventory, Scenery or other characters to solve puzzles. You cannot die and there will be no game over screens. The puzzles aren't in the same vein as Professor Layton however but more stupid in nature eg . needing to find a helmet to complete a task you must use a cooking pot found in a kitchen. In Special Edition there is a new control system which is used by pressing the left trigger to bring up the commands or right trigger to bring up the inventory. The D-pad can be used as a shortcut for the command menu, each direction selecting one of the 8 commands. This control system isn't as quick as the old but free's up the bottom of the screen from any clutter and allows the updated HD graphics to take centre stage. In saying that although the updated graphics are no doubt welcome in some parts of the game a certain character will look rushed or the animation will look slightly messy. At 800 Microsoft points however this isn't an issue and overall the graphic update is in keeping with the series. The music and sound has also been re-mastered and re recorded but gladly not with any remixes to the soundtrack. This time around speech has been added and the quality of voice acting is extremely high for an Live! Arcade game using original cast members of later Monkey Island games.
For the Retro nut by simply pressing the Back button on the control pad the game will instantly change from the high def version to the original game. Unfortunately there is no option to use the speech in this version.
I was interested to see how the actual game mechanic played out in today's gaming world, back in 1990 when the game was originally released frustration in games was commonplace. Nowadays games usually roll over at the sight of a player getting stuck so it was a surprise for me to see that solving problems was still so much fun. However I do think this game genre may not be for everyone and strongly advise taking up the trial option before buying. The game now includes a hint system accessed via the X button should any challenge/Puzzle become to hard to solve.
For people who do like a change of pace, a good story with great characters and something to test their grey matter this game is a must and I really hope this game does well enough so the superior sequel will be updated and released on Xbox Live! Arcade. I would have scored this 9.0 but during one segment of the game i got "stuck" could not move and had to start again from a previous save that was about an hour away from the point i had got to.
Buy this, enjoy the story and delight in one of the best games from yesteryear appearing on your home console at a ridiculously cheap price.
Story - 8
Graphics - 6
Sound - 9
Playability - 9
Value -10