Something went wrong. Try again later
    Follow

    The Secret of Monkey Island

    Game » consists of 11 releases. Released Oct 31, 1990

    The first game in the legendary Monkey Island series. Guybrush's desire to become a swashbuckling pirate gets him more adventure than he bargained for.

    makari's The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (Xbox 360 Games Store) review

    Avatar image for makari

    Do the Monkey with me!

    Monkey Island is one of those franchises that I remember playing way back in primary school. I used to ride my bike over to my mates place just to play adventure games like Monkey Island, Space Quest, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, among others. The news of a remake of the original classic The Secret of Monkey Island was cause for celebration, even though it turns out this remake isn't so much of a remake as it is a spit and polish.

    The Secret of Monkey Island is a classic Lucasarts adventure game where you play as Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate™ wannabe on his quest to become a pirate and find his fortune. On his journey to become a pirate, Guybrush meets a cast of humourous characters before love-interest Governor Elaine Marley is kidnapped by the ghost pirate LeChuck, prompting Guybrush to sail after her LeChuck's hideout on Monkey Island.

    For those not familiar with Monkey Island or adventure games in general, the gameplay consists mostly of puzzle solving by using certain items with certain points of the scenery, with each other, and on or given to NPC's. The solutions to these puzzles are meant to be found by use of logic (although random use of items on random things can also work when you get stuck), and talking to NPC's and examining items and points of interest in the scenery can give you clues as to what you're meant to be doing. The Special Edition of the game also contains a hint feature, which will be welcomed by newcomers to the game and genre since the puzzles in Secret of Monkey Island can sometimes be pretty obscure, and there are a few pixel hunts (finding a tiny point of interest among inconspicuous backgrounds) littered about. It's a little less user-friendly than the more recent Telltale brand of adventure gaming, but the solutions to the puzzles are satisfying and the humourous narrative is well worth the trouble of finding the solutions.

    The puzzle solving and narrative are what drives Monkey Island, and all of these are completely intact from the original. In fact, pretty much everything is intact from the original, since this is quite literally the exact same game, albeit with a 'looks and sounds awesome' layer plastered on top. You can tell this by the awesome feature of switching back and forth between old and new styles of the game by pressing Back on your controller, but even more telling are the animations of the characters.

    Because the game is exactly the same, the way the characters animate is based on the old 1990 code, meaning there are few frames of animation for the characters' actions and movement. The new HD artsyle looks great, but the characters really do look like they're from a time long-lost when they do anything, which can look really clunky compared to the smooth and crisp nature of the rest of the visuals. It's something that obviously cannot be helped because of the choice made to utilize the old code, and doesn't detract too much from the overall experience, but I still can't help but wonder what it'd be like if they went the whole hog and used the artstyle with the animation of more modern 2D games, or even went along the road of Curse of Monkey Island and used traditional cartoon animation techniques. Other aspects of the visuals, most noteably the environments, are all immaculately hand-painted and look spectacular. The cool little visual touches, like running water, heat-haze, and the smokey trail left by the ghostly LeChuck are great additions and liven up the presentation alot. Stan's shirt is still all kinds of awesome, too.

    Another addition to the Special Edition is voice acting, and for the most part it's really good, but it suffers a little for the same reasons as the animation suffers. Because the voice acting follows the stop-start animations of the character animations from the original, the characters are forced to give stop-start deliveries, which again feels a bit janky compared to how great the rest of the game sounds, and can break the feel of some of the dialogue. The remastered audio and music score are phenomenal though, and recreate the sounds of the original perfectly.

    The original Monkey Island used a point and click interface that wasn't exactly ideal even back in it's day. The Special Edition uses a more streamlined interface, but it can still feel a little clunky and make some of the time-based puzzles a little harder than they should be.

    The actions and inventory have been removed from the main screen. Pressing LT will bring up the list of actions you can choose from, and RT will bring up your inventory. While this streamlines the interface a whole lot, using items on other items feels a little clunky, and in the few cases where you will have to do these actions quickly, the system just doesn't cut it. In these cases, you will have to use the mapped shortcuts on the D-Pad (each direction corresponds to a different action). There are a few good points to the controls, though: the cursor sensitivity is just right, and the game maps a second action to the B button when hovering over a point of interest or NPC. For example, hovering the cursor over a door will make the B button action "open", which saves you the trouble of opening up the actions and selecting "open" from the list.

    The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Editon on XBLA is easy to recommend simply because the original was so great, and this is pretty much exactly the same game. The transition from pixelated sprites and PC speaker audio isn't as smooth as I'd really want it to be, and the controls are a little less than ideal, but everything that made The Secret of Monkey Island worth playing is present and accounted for, so you won't have to be skilled in treasure hunt-er-y to find this 800 MS Point package a pretty good deal.

    Other reviews for The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (Xbox 360 Games Store)

      Hating Secret of Monkey Island is like hating having a good time. 0

      It’s possible to not like The Secret Monkey Island. It’s also possible to not like good things in general. I’ve always wondered what makes old games age well. What tangible component that a game could have, mechanically or from a presentation standpoint that allows a gamer to pick up a game, ten, or in this case twenty years later and still enjoy it. My conclusion is that it’s a combination of things, entirely dependent of the game and in many cases the time period that the game was made. The ...

      6 out of 6 found this review helpful.

      Getting funky like a monkey 0

        I quickly found myself relating to Guybrush Threepwood’s voyage into the mysterious and deadly . I was also venturing to a strange and foreign land, that being the forsaken territory of the point and click adventure genre. I’ve always preferred the dry lands of the consoles over the PC’s treacherous waters and torrential system requirements. So this review for Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition may come off as a bit naïve, like I’m way out of my league by trying to review this mystical s...

      3 out of 4 found this review helpful.

    This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

    Comment and Save

    Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.