Spontaneous Sunday: The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

This week's Spontaneous Sunday game is The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (2009, LucasArts, XB1 via backwards compatibility). This is a remake of the original 1990 The Secret of Monkey Island, with remastered audio and visuals. It was released on Xbox 360 in 2009 and became backwards compatible with Xbox 1 last year. It was free on Xbox Live Games With Gold last November. This game was created by Ron Gilbert, who also created The Cave, which I played last week.

"The Secret of Monkey Island is a 1990 point-and-click graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It takes place in a fantastic version of the Caribbean during the age of piracy. The player assumes the role of Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who dreams of becoming a pirate and explores fictional islands while solving puzzles. LucasArts released a remake with updated audiovisuals titled The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition in July 2009. The remake features hand-drawn visuals with more detail, a remastered musical score, voice work for characters, and a hint system."

- Wikipedia on The Secret of Monkey Island and the Special Edition remake.

What do I expect from the game?

I have seen and heard a lot about Monkey Island, and by all accounts it is something of a quintessential 2D point-and-click puzzle game. I have a vague idea of the story and lore of the game, and I've seen plenty of screenshots, so I feel like I'm going into this with a pretty good idea of what I am in for. I do enjoy 2D games, but I don't play as many as I should, so Monkey Island had been on my "to play" list for a while!

With this being the special edition, I expect the audio and visuals to be of a high standard. Apparently the player has the option to change between the updates audio and visuals and the original audio and visuals with the push of a button. As far as I know, the gameplay remains the same as it was when the game was first released in 1990, so I'm pretty excited to see how it all works!

First Impressions - What do I think of the game in its first few minutes?

The game begins with a simple and charming LucasArts ident in which the original, pixel-art Guybrush Threepwood digs up a chest, out of which bursts the company logo. The start screen is also simple and consists of an out-of-focus landscape with the game's title logo. The front end has a nice aesthetic to it, with menu options displayed on a treasure map-esque scroll and various images of characters fading in and out.

On starting a new game, credits roll over an image of Mêlée Island at night, then the game cuts to a cliff-top. Guybrush enters and talks to a surly old lookout, telling him of his intention to become a pirate. The lookout directs you to the Scumm Bar to meet some important pirates. Guybrush then heads down to a dock and the player gains control of the character.

First view of the game world - meeting the lookout.

I started out by just walking around the dock for a bit and getting to grips with game's controls. I went back up to the cliff-top to see if the lookout had anything more to say, and he told me a bit about the islands governess and an infamous pirate, "LeChuck". The conversation system is simple and involves choosing what to say from a set list of options. Characters will then reply and new options may become available. I found and entered the Scumm Bar and began to chat with various pirates, who directed me to 3 "important looking pirates" who agreed to let me join their crew if I completed three trials, essentially providing me with my first proper quest/objective of the game. These trials are: defeat the islands Swordmaster, steal an idol from the Governor's mansion, and find the lost treasure of Mêlée Island.

The Scumm Bar!

By this point, the game's artwork had made a very good first impression. The hand-painted environments and NPCs have a really nice and interesting art style that has a lot of character. The voice acting and music also adds to the overall charm. It's possible to change the audio and visuals to original 1990 version at the push of a button for the nostalgia value.

Example of original graphics and conversation system...

...compared to the original version.

My first bit of puzzling involved sneaking into the Scumm Bar's kitchen while the cook was elsewhere. From there, I went out of a back door and acquired a fish from a seagull by stepping on a wooden plank to hit the seagull and scare it off. As the game continued, I quickly noticed how imaginative the puzzles are, and that they really require you to think outside of the box and be open to some pretty nonsensical ideas in terms of what to try to do in order to progress, and I was surprised at some of the solutions to certain puzzles. Monkey Island is not a level based, but takes place in a large interconnected world where an item you acquire in one place could be the solution to a puzzle on the total other side of the game world.

The "important-looking pirates" who give you the 3 trials.

What do I like about the game? What does it do well?

I played Monkey Island: Special Edition for about 4 hours and completed "the three trials" and getting 23% game completion. What I like about it most is its general look-and-feel/art style and its charm, and the creativity of the puzzle designs. Monkey Island: Special Edition has a very nice art style, with hand-painted 2D environments and characters as well as updated UI. Everything visual has been overhauled from the 1990 version. What is really interesting, though, is that its still the same game as the original at its core - it still plays the same, the script and the story are the same, which makes it a bit of a tricky one for me to review, having not played the original! Nevertheless, the visuals are definitely a strong positive point for the game. I've never played a game with an art style quite like this.

Monkey Island's charm doesn't just come from its visuals: the audio, character design and the humour also contribute. The game features full audio and voice acting, unlike the original which had more minimal audio and no voice acting. The voice acting and character design are very good and this makes for some amusing, memorable and likeable characters. The game's humour is also very important to its appeal. It's a very well-written game and it seems like being entertaining was often at the front of the developers minds when considering design and narrative choices. For example, the game features sword fighting, but this actually consists simply of battles of insults, in which the player has to figure out the correct response to their adversary's insults and then respond with their own. This acts as a catalyst for the game's writers to provide humour, while also offering a welcome alternative to straight-up fighting, which makes the game feel non-threatening. The fact that combat is in itself a puzzle of wits is in keeping with the game's emphasis on problem solving and puzzling over combat.

The game isn't afraid of breaking the 4th wall for comedic effect.

The game's puzzles are very imaginative and they challenge the player to really think about how different items, people and places all link in to one-another. There was many instances where I tried a rather random "shot in the dark" approach which actually ended up being the correct solution. Though the original game was not sophisticated in terms of art by todays standards, Monkey Island stands as a testament to the timelessness of imaginative and well designed puzzle games. Puzzles generally involve finding or acquiring items and using them in a certain way, either with another time or a feature of the environment. Interaction with NPCs is also a big part of the puzzling. To my knowledge, you don't really get games with this open-world style/format of puzzle anymore. It seems that modern games have smaller-scale puzzles that are centred around individual rooms or small areas. I found myself wondering why this could be - does the modern gaming market not have the patience for puzzles in big interconnected game worlds anymore?

The game offers some very interesting and colourful environments.

I enjoyed the general classic puzzle feel of the game, and I admire the approach that has been taken in modernising the game's audio and visuals for the Special Editions re-release. I think that the team involved in creating the re-release handled it well. They did the right thing by leaving the original story and gameplay intact, but updating the audio and visuals in order to provide the original gameplay experience makes the game more accessible and appealing to modern gamers. The fact that you can seamlessly switch back to the original audio and visuals at any time is a very nice touch - its almost as if you're getting two games in one! However, because my experience with games began in the late 90's, I've been spoilt by the audio and visuals of games from that era onwards, so I generally felt inclined to play the modernised version. I only really switched to the original version every so often if I was curious to see how an environment or character originally looked.

What do I not like?

The only faults that I found with Monkey Island: Special Edition are that it can sometimes be a bit slow-paced, and I found some of the puzzles to be a bit obtuse. A hint system was added to the Special Editon, and its a good job, because I found myself rather stuck more than once! My difficulty in figuring out the puzzles is probably mostly due to the fact that I am not used to classic puzzle games such as this, which arguably require more creative thinking and open-mindedness than modern puzzle games. There was also quite a lot of traipsing back and forth through the same areas.

Some reviewers took exception with the fact that the original SCUMM menu system was altered and replaced with a new inventory system. The SCUMM system is still present when you switch to the original version of the game, so I managed to have a bit of experience with both systems. I can honestly say that I can't decide which system I prefer more. While I don't feel entirely qualified to compare the two systems, having not played the original version of the game, I do feel like the new system should have been very obviously superior. Given the fact that it was made 20 years later and game menus have come a long way since then, I would have expected it to naturally outshine the original system, but it doesn't, and I think there could have been a better way of doing it.

Final Thoughts

On the whole, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a very charming, humorous and likeable game. The gameplay and script are timeless in the same way that a classic comedy film or series is. The puzzles are generally well designed, creative and challenging, even if they are a little unclear at times for a modern gamer like myself. I think that its a very well-remastered game, and it has had new life breathed into it by the addition of the new graphics and art style and the new audio. I can see now why it is regarded as such a classic and quintessential puzzle game, and I'm sure that I can learn an awful lot about puzzle and 2D games by playing it, so I plan to return to Monkey Island soon!