..is that these guys have a good heart but no fucking clue what they're doing.

The art director apparently has no idea what MI3 and 4 decided was the MI look, even though the new MI episode carried that torch right on ahead. This game just seems like it dropped out of space; I have no idea why they decided to reinvent the wheel. It doesn't help that the new art is amateurish at best and abhorrent at worst. The character art in particular is completely out of touch with the MI vibe. Guybrush went from a wide-eyed kid with no real clue what he got himself into to this cocky unlikable hydrocephalic sod with a ridiculous haircut. I'm impressed with how bad of a service they gave him.

The music and sound are wonderful. The new voiceovers give the old script new life, and the remade music really works. Totally high-five worthy.

The interface is a complete and utter joke made by someone who has apparently never played much of an adventure game before. The verb grid and inventory are hidden to show off the new art (why?), but every verb is still in there. This means you basically have to mousewheel through 9 verbs! Since MI first came out, adventure games have evolved to the point where push-pull-give-use etc are all cooked into one "use" verb, which is the only reason a mousewheel cycle or "verb wheel" as in Full Throttle worked. Trying to adopt this approach with nine fucking verbs is completely ridiculous. The result of course is that you use the keyboard shortcuts for the verbs, but i feel thoroughly terrible for the console players who don't have that luxury. Speaking of keyboard; You have to push alt or i to bring up the inventory! I don't even know wether to laugh or cry at this. It's such a thoroughly idiotic design decision. There is literally no way to access the inventory without a keyboard command. You can't play this graphical adventure mouse only!

I'm fucking depressed now. I love this game so much - It's the first computer game i bought with my own money when i was a kid - and now Lucasarts apparently decided to give the job of remaking it to people who are out of touch with both the franchise and the genre. Thank god Telltale are doing good things with the episodes.

I'll obviously play this remake through to see all the new art, especially looking forward to monkey island itself, but the game, as an adventure game, is jacked. How can you fuck something this simple up so badly?