Sometimes, after you've finished putting dozens of hours into a video game, you're just looking for something light and fluffy to kill some time. You're not looking for another Fallout 3 or Mass Effect to take over your life, you just want to have some fun. So, in browsing through the games for download on XBox Live Arcade, you see a title you recognize.
Switching over to the first person now, I hadn't ever actually played any of the Monkey Island games before, but I'd heard good things, mainly in elementary school, so I figured what the heck, it should be good for a larf.
So, after starting it up, THUMP, you're right into the game. And, by right into the game, I mean you're randomly on a cliffside, talking to some random old man. You ask him how to be a pirate and he tells you to go talk to some other pirates. So you go talk to the other pirates, and they tell you what you need to do for consideration into their ranks. The story goes on from there, pursuing those requirements, onto a rescue mission to reclaim your love interest, eventually to the pits of hell below the titular Monkey Island, then back again for a final encounter with the Ghost Pirate LeChuck. Pardon me if I'm not sounding too enthusiastic.
I had a few beefs with this whole experience. For one, a lot of the time is spent scrolling your mouse back and forth across the screen trying to find hot spots that you'll be able to interact with. This is most frustrating once you get to Monkey Island, where I spent way too many minutes going over the screens I'd found with a fine-toothed comb, only to eventually realize that there were some screens that I hadn't found because I hadn't taken my fine-toothed comb technique to the world map. This frustration happens more than once, including one particularly memorable time toward the end of the game when you have to gain entry to a sacred giant monkey head. Generally, when I'm playing a puzzle/adventure game, I want the solutions to be logical, and, when I finally figure them out, I want to smack myself on the forehead and feel silly for not having realized it before. However, at no point did I feel any inclination toward facial abuse, thinking "Of course! Why didn't I think to put my mouse over that quarter-inch section of the screen that showcases the nose on a totem pole, which MUST be the secret way to enter that monkey head." No, sir.
And then there's the silliness of the game itself. Because the game is self-aware, it seems to forgive itself for not being able to be taken seriously. On at least two occasions, Guybrush (that's you) makes reference to how the player has gotten ripped off by buying this game. We chortle at the self-reference, although, I was secretly agreeing. Having purchased the game 18 years after its release, I paid a whopping $9.99. Guybrush's jokes talk about how the player's been had for having to pay $54.99 or some similar amount. I do not disagree with him. But, as I mentioned, this meta-humour seems like it's trying to balance out the absolutely absurd aspects of the game. As a for example, at one point, you're in a fight with the town sheriff, but the whole exchange happens behind a wall. For about five minutes, you're prompted to hit the A-button every fifteen seconds or so when it presents you with the option to "pick up gopher repellent" then "use gopher repellent on giant gopher" then "use gopher repellent on giant beaver" or something like that. This whole thing happens with no visuals to back it up, results in a bunch of random stuff added to your inventory, and a joke whose tedium gets in the way of the humour pretty quickly. I do understand that it's funny to have such silly things going on, and I did half-enjoy reading the kinds of shenanigans that were going on behind that wall, but when the gopher repellent that I find back there ends up being crucial to the completion of the game, I just get kind of mad.
And then there's the fact that absolutely nothing you do in the game matters. You go through the trials to become a pirate, but once you do, the pirates you were trying to impress disappear and you're given the new mission of putting together a crew to help (wo)man your rescue mission. As soon as you've got all of them together, they mutiny, and you have to do everything yourself anyway. 93% of what you do and learn is irrelevant beyond its immediate circumstance. And, once you get through it all, you end up standing out on the docks, watching some fireworks, making plans to marry the woman you've had two, count 'em, two conversations with.
Sure, the game's kind of funny, and there's some originality in the puzzles (at least the logically solveable ones), but as far as I can tell, even with shiny new graphics, The Secret Of Monkey Island doesn't deserve the legacy it holds.
Rating: 3.0 stars
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