Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho A Pirates Life for Me! A look at the Special Edition of The Secret of Monkey Island.
Developer: Lucasfilm Games
Publisher: LucasArts
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Genre(s): Graphic Adventure
Release Date: July 15, 2009
"Originally released back in 1990, The Secret of Monkey Island is a video game that I have heard people talk about for years. I however never got to play it and always wondered about it whether it was/is as good as I have heard everyone say it was/is. Thankfully with the release of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition released in 2009 it was then possible for me to experience this game for myself.
The Secret of Monkey Island is a point-and-click adventure where you take control of Guybrush Threepwood, in his quest to become a pirate. Monkey Island has several puzzles in it which made me groan since I am not a big fan of puzzles, but they grew on me and I found myself enjoying them after a while, and with the hint system that they added into this special edition I never really had to yank my hair due to frustration. If this game caused me any sort of pain it was from how hard it would make me laugh. At the time of when I played this game it was by far the funniest game that I had ever played in my life. The humor was so well done, just thinking about it now makes me chuckle.
With the Special Edition you have the option to play the game with the new enhanced graphics and voiceovers or you could play the game in all of it's original glory. Which is pretty cool but I never found myself playing the old over the new.
In no time upon starting the game you and Threepwood will be wandering all over the place stuffing everything you can into Threepwood's apparently bottomless pockets and trying to figure out how to use or combine these things so that you can progress through this heartwarming experience.
However much of the time spent in Monkey Island is in dialogue trees with various amusing and odd characters. However sometimes in the conversations I found that while still funny some of the delivery wasn't as good as I expected it to be. The voice acting is a very welcome addition however and aside from a couple of those moments they are all hilarious. Except for a couple where your forced to listen to certain characters (mainly one in my experience) that I found to be irritating and boring.
In Conclusion, The Secret of Monkey Island is relatively short game. Even not being a fan of puzzles and not being good at them at all, and honestly not having a clue what I was doing it took me about 8 hours to get through it. So it is a little on the short side I guess, but it was an experience that I wholeheartedly believe everyone should experience even if your not a fan of puzzles like myself."
+New Voiceovers
+Full of Hilarious Moments
+Quite interesting Puzzles
+New Hint System
+Option to play with original visuals and audio
-Sometimes frustrating dialogue trees
-Interface is admittedly kind of clunky
-Kind of Short
8.0/10
Silver Seal of Recommendation