Brake For Frogger!

Following the release of last year’s ‘Secret of Monkey Island (Special Edition)’ HD remake release, Lucas Arts have come back this summer with the equivalent release of the sequel to the original game.

I’ve always thought fondly of the Monkey Island series of games as they formed a large part of my gaming experience as I was growing up. The first Monkey Island game was one that I always observed my parents playing whereas ‘Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge’ was the first point-and-click adventure title that I ever played and kick-started an affair with the genre that never really stopped.

Try explaining this situation to your beloved...

Playing this Special Edition is almost likely playing an entirely different game to the original version. Not in a bad way, of course, but it creates such a contrast between the original subtitled, pixellated version of the game. My own personal experience of ‘LeChuck’s Revenge’ was on the Amiga 32 with the game spaced across numerous floppy disks. What the remake does, at least for those who experienced the original, is to enhance and improve a thorough plot and storyline, with memorable characters and make it accessible again in a way that the original version has difficulty with.

For newcomers to the series or to the genre, this game has a lot to offer. Lucas Arts have implemented a new control system for this game too. It allows you to have manual control of Guybrush Threepwood (the game’s protagonist) using the left analogue stick and gives you control of the point-and-click style cursor using the controller’s right stick.

I can see how this would appeal to people who have never played a classic adventure game like this before and would probably work for them, but I found it very confusing and almost irritating to use and found myself quickly switching back to the standard cursor-based click-to-move control system.

...Conspiring much?

As with last year’s remake, it was fun to be given the opportunity to be able to switch back and forth between the original, especially for those who are already familiar with it. For people like me, it gave me a giggle every now and then wondering how on earth I was able to figure out how to use/interact with certain items given how they occasionally didn’t resemble what they were supposed to be.

It could be, however, that my opinion is merely a symptom of the HD-gaming age and a certain accustomisation to clearly defined graphics.

The two original Monkey Island games fit clearly into an obscure 80s/90s Lucas Arts niche: the Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer-led humour of certain titles lent itself to obscure puzzle solutions and random storyline arcs that, to a mind this is unfamiliar to them, can come across as completely unintelligible.

*...hack-cough-splutter...*

Cameron broached this issue in a review of last year’s remake of the original Monkey Island game. He essentially explained that because he had not been a fan of the games in the first instance, it was difficult to slip into a school of thought that allowed you, for example, to use a rubber chicken with a pulley inserted to cross a zip-wire over a river or to use some flowers found in the local woods to poison the governess’ pet guard-poodles. This relative obscurity could serve to alienate some people who already bought the game but find themselves unable to follow the Gilbert/Schafer train of thought and make blatantly bizarre and illogical decisions in order to progress. The sequel is equally bizarre and completely random in places, with moments like peg-leg polishing and spitting competitions to look forward to.

Luckily (and the same was true for last year’s game too), when you find yourself completely stuck, you no longer have to balance your finances and re-mortgage the house before ringing the official hint-line for the game and be drip fed minor clues by a 50p per minute glorified answering machine. The hints system is now built into the game and you just hold down the X button to be given a clue relevant to the next stage in the progression of Guybrush’s story. (Be aware, however, that there are achievements on offer for using minimal hints and tips as you play through the game). Sometimes the hints can be quite cryptic themselves and leave you none the wiser as to what your next step should be – although that could just be my own personal experience as there were a few moments during my play-through where I was left still feeling pretty stupid even after asking the game for some help.

It stands to reason that essentially this remake of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge was really only going to ‘do it’ for those that played it when it originally came out or those who have had it recommended to them by those who originally played it. It may be controversial to say but it believe that the market no longer truly exists for the point-and-click game except in a retrospective, reminiscent sense that Lucas Arts is currently appealing to. LeChuck’s revenge is a great game; as good as it was when it was originally released back in the early 1990s.

Try figuring this one out. :'/

I’d gladly recommend it to people who remember it as fondly as I do, as it’s a brilliant update to a classic title. Here’s hoping for more indulgent remakes of classic Lucas Arts games heading our way in the future. Preferably ‘Day of the Tentacle’ and ‘LOOM’ please…