Monkey Island™ 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge™

Everything in the game is designed to piss you off. The joke is always on the player. Adventure games typically encourage exploration with the world, this was extremely off putting. Even more so than the first in the series.

Una remasterización magistral que preserva el humor y los puzles desafiantes del original, elevándolos con un apartado visual pintado a mano y una banda sonora orquestada sublime y tener la posibilidad de alternar al estilo retro al instante lo convierten en la versión definitiva de esta joya de LucasArts.

Its ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Monkey Island! :D Everyone should play this game!

Reviewing every game I've played in my Steam Library. Game 49 Excellent, the puzzles are confusing and I need a guide for most of the game past the first act but the option to swap to the old pixel art style (using F1) is the icing on the cake.

I can understand why newer generations of players aren't chomping at the bit to dig up old point-and-click games and sing their praises, even for social media content. It's because they don't operate on video game logic™, they operate on developer logic™, which, in the old days, wan't based on "logic" at all. In this game's series' case, it was complete cockamamie ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that sortof required you to understand the dev studio to get some sense of an idea on how to complete it. If you never saw a single Indiana Jones movie, would you have the idea to swap a necessary, game-completing book, that was lying on a sleeping pirate tyrant's lap, with another book (doesn't matter which) that was located in a nearby library? Would that reference make sense to you? Even if you did watch all the Indy movies, does the game do a good job of explaining that to you? I personally don't think they did. This game has a hint button, that can guide you along. What this game doesn't tell you is that the hints are location-specific at certain points, and they could've done a better job of making sure those hints guide the player to the objective. Your goal is to find four pieces of a map, but finding 1-2 pieces gets you to a point where the hints stop guiding you to the next objective and start reiterating that you need to find the other pieces. Just one, of four, based on what you figured out for yourself, would've been better, but at a certain point you have to just click/combine/attempt everything to get ahead. This turns a 6 hour game into a much longer game. Now, if you're a "journey" over "destination" type gamer, you won't have a problem with that. But if you were born in the past 30 years, there is something to be said about game design here. Without the internet, I don't expect most people would finish this game, past or present, as was unintentionally (or maybe intentionally) intended when this game came out some 2x years ago, when computers where less useful, vague with how they could enrich your life, and suggested that any amount of time you spent with them outside work suggested that you were a total loser. The first game didn't require the hint button, but it was juuuuust helpful enough. The second game (this one) they went way overboard. You need a "monkey" wrench to open up a new path to progress the game? [spoiler]The hint was in the word "monkey" in quotes?[/spoiler] Where do you find a monkey? [spoiler] In the bar you've been to to get to this point in the first place. Did you know there was a monkey there? No. But there was a sign in the bar that said there was a performer there that played the piano every now and again. Do you need to be a bit racist to "get the logic" of this game? I don't know but it feels like it, a bit...[/spoiler] At that point, you had to sneak into the kitchen in the backroom to progress that far in the game. Why would you think to come back there? Only if you exhausted all other options. [spoiler] I got 3 drinks from that bar and thought that they might help with solving the drinking competition that gets you one of the map pieces, but this ain't Putt-Putt or Freddie Fish, this game is harder. [/spoiler] Say what you want about 'the need to turn a profit' trumping 'engaging game design/yellow paint', and the like, but I had to use the "hint" button (H) at every moment I got stuck during the final chapters of the game because, straight-up, modern-day game developers don't think the same as the old-guard, and that's probably for good reason. If the puzzle game is too convoluted to solve without a hint button, then there's probably a good reason that the original writers stopped f*cking with this game after the second installment. (the one I'm reviewing now) I haven't finished the game, because I got to a point that required google to pass. Am "EYE" out of touch? Should point-and-click video game success be based on the "Dungeon Master's" logic to win? No, I say. It's the elders who are wrong. At some point, you'll have to just rely on the hint button to finish the game. If "listening to your elders" was such a great idea, why didn't our elders do that? Because they're full of ♥♥♥♥. Actually, this is the perfect game series for cheap, "bottom-of-the-barrel game-review-content-to-get-a-quick-check" content, because it is straight-up infuriating. And if I see my youtube algorithm suddenly decide to recommend me a video-essay about this game and its flaws. Or a smarmy, well paid (maybe British or Australlian) game reviewer decide to start talking about it, then I'll take solace in the fact that the game journalism system is working as intended.

6/10

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Monkey Island 2 Special Edition is a lovely way to revisit one of the all-time great point-and-click adventures. The hand-painted updated visuals look gorgeous, the new voice acting fits perfectly, and the ability to toggle back to the original art and audio at the press of a button is the kind of fan-respecting feature more remasters should adopt. The writing and humor still hold up beautifully, Guybrush is as charmingly hapless as ever, and LeChuck's Revenge remains one of the genre's high points. A loving treatment of a classic.