The Secret of Monkey Island: Play by Play *Completed*

The second place winner in my poll of "What to Play?" was Lucasarts' The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. I had no expected to move onto the next game so quickly, but Tomb Raider: Legend was quite short. I am going to continue my "Play by Play" series of threads because the last one was fun to write and writing about a gaming experience makes it feel less like wasting time.



So, The Secret of Monkey Island was originally released in 1990. The special edition was released in 2009. From the little I read, they basically replaced all the old, pixelly graphics with fancy, painterly ones, remastered the score, and probably some other stuff. I assume the story and gameplay will be essentially the same.

Check out them fancy graphics!


I don't have much experience with point-and-click adventure games, which is one reason I wanted to check this one out. I remember having a blast with The Neverhood, another game of this type created by Doug TenNapel (of Earthworm Jim fame) and also released by Lucasarts. I also played a bit of Codename: ICEMAN back in the day, but I never really figured out what to do there. Those are the only two games like this I recall playing a lot of. I hope to expand my enjoyment of the graphical adventure game by playing Monkey Island.

I played for 26 minutes today, so there's not much to say about it yet, but there seems to be a good story brewing and the game seems to have a good humor to it. Once again, though, I've run into some control issues. The whole clicking on things part seems to be rather finicky; clicking on selections in the dialog trees doesn't always work and getting from one screen to another has given me trouble as well. Some of the animation seems pretty jerky as well. Maybe some of these issues will be ironed out as I play the game more.

Stay tuned, kids.

I've racked up some more time on the old Monkey Island machine, so I'm getting a better idea of what I'm in for, and I'm a little afraid that this game will drive me crazy.

I walked around for a bit, collecting random items and talking to different people, but I was soon pretty lost as what to do. A game shouldn't send someone running to an on-line walkthrough within the first hour of play. A couple things I probably should have thought to try on my own, but other things are down right counter-intuitive. For example, one of the first big obstacles is to get past a bunch of dogs. With all the pirate talk of grog and how it's practically poison, I attempted to combine a piece of meat with grog. That doesn't work. Y'know what does work? Combining meat with flower petals. There were no hints as to the flowers being sleep-inducing. I really hope this doesn't turn into a guessing game where I have to constantly try combining every item I have.

My other gripe so far is with some of the animation and the timing of the dialog/cut scenes. Conversations with the characters are very stiff and awkward, more like watching animatronic robots than a smooth cartoon with skilled voice actors. I realize this was probably standard in 1990, but you'd think they would work with it in the Special Edition.

That being said, I have been enjoying the design of the game, especially the painted backgrounds. There's also a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor about it that I like.

I've been moving through this game pretty quickly, despite its difficulty... Probably because of the Internet and the helpful "Hit 'H' for a hint" feature. I may be overusing H now that I know about it, but this game can really be quite infuriatingly difficult. Some puzzles do indeed have very clever solutions, but some are just frustrating. Like when the solution is counter-intuitive, or like when some rooms have tons of useless items labeled (clickable) and others have a necessary item hidden amidst nearly identical unlabeled items. There was one puzzle I solved partially by throwing random items in a large pot. I don't even know which items corresponded with which clues.

But really, the most frustrating thing is not a game making me feel stupid, but the precision clicking necessary. For most things, the acceptable clicking area is very logical. For other things, like rowing a boat to another screen or scrolling through an item menu or selecting a conversation response, are ridiculous. For example, to scroll through the item menu, the acceptable clicking area is not the up or down arrow, but slightly above or below it, depending on the arrow. For a game that's a "Special Edition" of a then-19-year-old game, this kind of glitchiness is inexcusable.

Regarding professionalism, aside from some pretty good writing, playing this almost feels like playing the senior thesis of a game design major, assuming he/she was able to acquire the help of a good digital painter. It's probably partially the game's style that creates this feeling, but mostly it's the unintuitiveness, glitchiness, and poor timing.

So what's good about it, eh? Anything? Of course there is. The story is fun and the dialog is mostly well-written, if sometimes poorly timed. The backgrounds are beautiful and the characters are well-designed, if sometimes a bit stiff-looking. But considering the game was around for almost twenty years before getting the makeover, I don't understand how it was so successful. I guess it was just a different time.

I have beaten the Secret of Monkey Island (in 6 hours). The biggest secret seemed to be the location of the island itself. The other secret that I learned very early on in the game is that this is not my cup of tea. I just don't have the patience for so many guessing games.

During the unskippable, lengthy credits, I realized this probably would have been a lot more fun if I was 12 and playing it with a friend or two. But now, I think I've developed too much of an expectancy of how games are supposed to work that thinking along the lines of Monkey Island puzzles just can't work for me.

I think I may try playing The Neverhood again sometime soon to see if my fond memories of that point-and-click adventure hold up.