Secret of Monkey Island was great in 1990. By today's standards, it's incredibly lacking. Lazy remake ahead.
- Somes jokes makes you smile.
- Guybrush Threepwood's comments on anything.
- The island in the intro.
What I disliked :
- Horrendeous animation, that are completely unacceptable by today's standards and could have been easily redone by college students.
- Not very funny. Sure, some lines are punchy, but if you actually '' laugh '', well you're probably the kind of person to laugh at the word '' banana ''.
- Clunky interface and archaic inventory/verb screen that is too complex for its own good.
- 5 hours long of content ( unless you get stuck for hours. )
When I heard Lucasarts was remaking the first Monkey Island, I went nuts. I LOVED games like Curse of the Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Full throttle, yet i've never tried the first two parts of the MI series, since as a kid, its graphics turned me off too much.
So now that I got the chance to finally try what was praised as a masterpiece back then, I'm left quite unimpressed, and even for 10 bucks, I feel like I've waisted my cash.
You know, sometimes indie devs releases unofficial remakes just for fun, well, this game looks like it has been done like a flash game. You know, lame animations, bland art style? Yeah. It looks and plays like that.
So, appart from the cool intro sequence, the rest of the game is pretty unpleasant for the eye. Away the superb style of the artists who brought you Curse of Monkey Island and Escape from Monkey Island, and instead welcome a very bland, lifeless and unoriginal style that looks decieving.
Curse of Monkey Island's art style was so vibrant, that even today, it doesnt look outdated. I know that the original artists left for Automn Moon Entertainement, but it's not an excuse to ruin the modern flair of the series and replace it with such horrible and ugly decors. I heavily disliked about everything I saw in that game, because it just hurted my memories so much.
That said, the puzzles you'll encounter arent very creative, they're pretty much logic, and in a way, very uninspired. Hey, you'll need cash to BUY items. Since when do you buy stuff in an adventure point and click? Oh well, i'll get over this one since it was originally released almost 20 years ago. The game features a very old-school verb / inventory system that is very uneeded. Instead to '' click for an action '', you'll have to manually select some unconventional actions, like PUSH, PULL, or CLOSE. The inventory, at least on PC, is cluncky to use. See, when you want to SCROLL DOWN, using the arrow icon, it just wont work. You'll have to click around like a mad fool, until the game '' recognizes '' that you are clicking the sweet spot. Trying to click the sweet spot will make you do a lot of unwanted stuff, like examine items, that you didnt want to in the first place.
The dialogue are unskippable ( except cutscenes) wich means that if you examine an item by mistake ( due to the superb/sarcasm inventory screen ) you'll hear long and not funny useless description. The game now has voice over, and they feel wrong. For a very simple reason. See, there's some odd pauses between each lines, just like if the character spoke through a talkie-walkie.
The game's humor is a hit or miss. It's not about over the top characters with laughable situations, its about a quite normal-looking, devoid of any flair, pirate world with some well written dialog. I won't lie, I didnt laugh once. I chuckled once, at the very ending screen, when it says '' never pay more then 20 bucks for a computer game '' and I told myself, yeah, you got that right.
Monkey Island isn't a game I can recommend to anyone but 25 years old and + people who played the original and want to re-experience it since the original just don't work on our computers today.
That said, I'm not even interested to experience part two ( if they ever ''remake'' it,- if you call this a remake- ) since I can forsee horrible animations, lame art style devoid of any life, forced '' Ah...Ah..'' jokes and a one, butt-ugly, character design for Guybrush Threepwood.
I'm eagerly waiting for part two of Tales of Monkey Island, wich proven to be a better MI experience than the very own remake of MI1.
On a side-note, if this ''remake'' had been re-drawn with a superb art style, I would have enjoyed the title even more, because for me, the humor of Monkey Island isnt only about the spoken jokes, but also the environnement, wich was often quite funny.
With that kind of lame effort from the two or three dudes who worked on that ''special edition'' ( since I doubt more employees worked on that game, considering its quality ) I wouldn't be surprised to see more half-assed so-called remakes like this in the near future. I just hope they won't ruin Full Throttle like this. Hey, if you get to do Full Throttle, at least give it proper animations, or just don't touch it.
Unlike those old aged reviewers who praises this remake like the second coming of the banana-god, as a 22 years old guy, I can't help but see all the flaws of the game way before its qualities. If the game was a little bit more pleasant for the eye, had a working inventory screen, combined verbs into a ACTION BUTTON, I would have enjoyed the adventure a lot more.
Anyways, i'm happy to see that modern adventure games ( wich I love, I've got all the recent point and clicks ) have evolved in the right step.
Verdict : Pass, unless you played it a long time ago.