Return to Monkey Island

3.5 out of 5. When you finish Return to Monkey Island you will find something that I won't spoil from the developers which, I think, sets out what they were trying to do. And it's quite touching and quite mature. HOWEVER, I don't think the game quite succeeds the way it should have as an adventure game. It's good, and I'd recommend it for fans of the original two games. But I'm not sure I'd recommend it to a wider audience. Because for a good third of the game (and it's a long third if you play in hard mode with the verbose option on), essentially everything happening is revisiting old haunts that have moved with the times and, to be quite frank, I found it rather annoying. The two original Ron Gilbert-era Monkey Island games stood out because they were wildly original and wildly inventive *between themselves*. Monkey Island 2 *didn't* devote itself to retreading the same ground as Monkey Island 1. It took us on whole new adventures to whole new places with new people. That's what made it fun. Sure, some of the characters came along for the ride. But they were transplanted into something different. Return to Monkey Island only begins to get there pretty far into the game. And, suddenly, it lifts off and you find the same sparkling wit and originality that characterised the originals (especially on the ghost pirate ship and when, later, you AT LAST find yourself able to sail around the sea map yourself and exploring wonderful NEW environments). The game really needed to be that from the beginning (and one of the reasons I avoided the sequels from 3 onwards was that they were too stuck in that nostalgia rut). Beyond that, Return has an unusual art style which I mostly prefer to the art style adopted from 3 onwards, because part of the charm of the original two was that pixels allowed you to do fun things in ways higher res painterly styles do not and left something to the player's imagination. Return has a blocky approach to character design which is quite appealing. *Except*, weirdly, for the design of Guybrush Threepwood, which is just ugly and weird (except when he's disguised as someone else). The makers also make a slightly strange choice to show locations closer up than in the early entries, which felt oddly claustrophobic and missed a lot of opportunities to show some genuinely pretty scenic environments in all their glory. The music is fine, but oddly muted at times compared to some previous entries. The voice acting is good throughout (although recorded with so little use of effects that it feels a bit flat / neutral, in recording terms, making proceedings feel a little too small, though I may have been noticing this on account of the game's making only limited use of ambient sounds). The puzzles, on the whole, are good, though don't expect quite the same level of wild insanity as the monkey wrench of yore. There are also a few too many puzzles that rely on you noticing that the user interface has come back in the middle of a dialogue sequence, which is just an irritating gimmick that is easily missed. A useful in-game hint function that doesn't spoil everything is well-implemented, however. And the ending is... Well, even for what it is trying to illustrate, the ending is not well-executed and in storytelling terms utterly deflating. I was pretty astonished that no post-credits scene was included to make clear that, no, the developers were only yanking your chain and the resolution wasn't really that limp (a short post-credits scenelet that varies with your choices does nothing to undo the damage). And, to state the obvious, the entire opening of Return is devoted to sorting out the problems created by a not dissimilar ending mess in Monkey Island 2. Return makes jokes about that ending. And then messes up its own! It's a good game, it's polished, and as I say once it gets going the writing still sparkles, the humour, the inventiveness are definitely still there. But I think to an extent the makers let their own preoccupations, and the need for nostalgia, override the need to give players a real romp, however noble the intentions. Monkey Island with an ending trying for high art simply doesn't work. Guybrush and co are meant to abstract reality in absurd and ridiculous ways, not inhabit it, and the ending is very much the wrong side of meta for a story set in Guybrush's Caribbean pirate world. Perhaps next time, should there be a next time, a better title might be "Beyond Monkey Island". So they can leave the damned place behind and not just rekindle but allow to blaze the inventiveness and sparkle that so obviously still remain.

Es mag auf den ersten Blick anders aussehen, aber hier ist 100% Monkey Island drin. Mit etwas Abstand halte ich die Diskussionen über den Grafikstil als übertrieben. Er passt zum Ton des Spiels und hat viel Charme. Die Rätsel sind erstklassig! Wie immer bei der Reihe variieren sie zwischen relativ einfach und den ein oder anderen schwer zu knackenden Nüssen. Wer gar nicht weiterkommt hat sogar eine integrierte Lösungsmöglichkeit (ohne Nachteile). Die Story ist super, der Humor immer noch der gleiche und das Ende überraschend emotional. Ich hoffe sehr, dass Guybrush seinem Erinnerungsalbum noch weitere Seiten hinzufügen wird.

This game was played in its entirety on a MacBook Air M1 8gb ram 7c gpu running MacOS Sonoma. There were no bugs or crashes throughout my time with the game. All achievements unlocked at their appropriate times. This was a fantastic adventure, full of charm and wit. The player should know, however, that the entire endeavor has a bittersweet aroma about it, especially if you read all of the "extras" that will be available to you after you complete the game. There may or may not be another Monkey Island adventure. Well, with that out of the way, let's get to the positives and negatives. The Good: The writing is phenomenal, as always. You'll laugh, you might cry, you might even be moved by the end. There isn't a single spelling error, grammar snafu, or punctuation misplaced in the entire script. That's impressive! More impressive is the voice acting! Dominic (Guybrush) has never delivered a bad performance in my opinion. But some of the supporting cast have not always been so fortunate. This time, however, everyone is delivering their lines expertly. Every single character in this game has amazing voice work. Standouts include LeChuck, Boybrush, Elaine, Carla, and Iron Rose. Everyone is a joy to listen to, and it's such a shame that you'll inevitably feel that you can never hear all of the voice work, because so much of it is tied to actions you've taken potentially hours in the past. The artwork is really great. The puppet style is not generally one of my favorites, but you can barely notice the style here. It's puppet-adjacent, perhaps (what a horrifying sentence!). Everyone animates extremely smoothly, and all of the sets are really fun to look at and explore. Most locations have a skewed fish-eye effect, which again is not my favorite, but it's a hallmark of Monkey Island games so I cannot complain about their inclusion. The length of the game is just right. My full play through took over 20 hours, but a lot of that was for collecting every trivia card (more on them later) and reloading and exploring other paths when a "huge decision" has to be made. After the full play through, I completed the speed run in an hour and 10 minutes or so. You can really dash through everything if you know what to do, and I do like that they made this an achievement (I normally hate speed run achievements) because it was actually a lot of fun to zip through everything at top speed, consequences be damned! The puzzles in the game are close to top-tier. None will drive you to a guide or walk through, but some will have you scratching your head, and you might have to backtrack a bit. As with all MI games, the opportunities for actual death are quite rare, but they do exist so frequent saves are always recommended. I really liked the difference between casual and standard mode. I also liked the difference when the "Writer's Cut" was enabled. The randomized riddles were my favorites, as they demanded a good memory and clever reasoning. The trivia cards were my favorite bit of the game! You can start collecting them almost from the very start, and you could still be collecting them at the end. That is, unless you love them like me, and are also crazy, and then you can get every one of them (well, minus one, so 169/170) right at the start of the game! Yes, it took many hours, but these trivia cards span all Monkey Island games, and even delve into other LucasArts games, the company itself, and interesting trivia (some of which I did not know!) about the creation of these games. Truly great stuff. They added more cards at least once since the launch of the game, and I hope they do so again! Now, on to the The Bad: One thing I don't like is that the controls are stiff. You could open your inventory, select an item, use it on another item (or object in the world), but if you reopen your inventory at any point during the "usage animation" (whatever it may be), you'll stop completely. That seems odd and weird. Also, you can run when you double click, but for some reason it was always exceedingly difficult to get Guybrush to do so. I'd frequently have to double click several times until he would finally start running. Not the best controls, but they did not hamper the speed run in the slightest, so this is just a nitpick. The ending will, again, be controversial. It's certainly not a huge surprise (can't say more or people will guess), and I did wind up liking it. I do see that it could really lessen certain people's enjoyment of the game (and maybe series) as a whole. But, I really grew to enjoy the ending after reading through Guybrush's Scrapbook (more gets added to it as you play the game) and the final "hidden" letter is...well, it definitely hits hard. The older you are, the harder it hits. I'll say no more. Another small negative is that the game forces you to watch the credits, in full, to see the final scene of the game. They are ten minutes long. But if you love the game, is that a big deal? What if I told you that there were TEN DIFFERENT ENDINGS? And yes, I did spend nearly two hours with the credits scrolling (on mute after the first time!) to see every scene. I found out later that several websites have all of them for easy viewing, if you want to save yourself some time. The final negative is the largest. And that negative is that it is fairly obvious, as you play the game, that they really ran out of time at the end. Most of the end-game islands have nothing (or almost nothing) on them, despite having numerous beautiful locations. Similarly, I can count at least five important people in the game that have no ending whatsoever. They have important lines (and animations) right near the end, and then nothing. It might have been better to just pull some of those extra bits of dialogue, and even give us some text at the end, showing or telling us what happened to some of our favorites (or some of our hateds!). But that's about it for the negatives. Overall, a joyous experience, and I highly recommend this game to anyone that loves adventure games. You MUST play the other Monkey Island games first, however. A subpar experience in this game is your only reward if you do not. Thanks for reading this far!

Lame fanservicy beginning. Lame ending. Mid game was fun.

Leaving a late review. Played through this soon after it was released and really enjoyed it. Playing previous Monkey Island games is not necessary, but would enhance your experience with this one to some extent. I had played most of the Monkey Island games when I was young, so this was very nostalgic. Not overly challenging or unnecessarily complicated in terms of puzzles, which was appreciated. Would highly recommend it if you're a fan of point and click adventure games or want to try a modern take on this old school genre.

Como fan absoluto de la saga Monkey Island, tengo que decir que éste Return to Monkey Island cuando vi el arte de los gráficos, no me gustó nada, me pareció un cambio demasiado radical, pero esa sensación desaparece una vez que empiezas a jugarlo, te acostumbras. Lo he terminado y me ha gustado excepto el final, que es inesperado... Si jugaste a los anteriores Monkey Island y te gustaron, es una compra obligatoria para disfrutar de nuevo con las aventuras de Guybrush. Recomendado.

What is that ending?