Game Details

Title: The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition
Cost: 800 MS Points
Developer: Lucasarts
Publisher: Xbox Live Arcade
Website: Lucasarts Monkey Island Page
Game Type: Point and Click Adventure Game
Multi-player: None
Length: Short (<5 hours)

My Impressions

I am a long time fan of the Monkey Island series and have played and completed all of the games released so far, including the recently released first episode of Tales of Monkey Island. So when I heard at E3 that the first game was getting a makeover and re-release on XBLA I was quite excited about the news and as this review shows have bought and completed it. The Question is then, how does The Secret of Monkey Island hold up after 19 years? (originally released in 1990)

Looking at it as a perspective of a fan I have to say that the update to the game holds up fairly well.  The updated graphics while not as high quality as in recent point and click games bring the visuals to an acceptable standard. While the new soundtrack and voice over help bring the game to life, and with the voice over artists from the later Monkey Island games being brought in there is no jarring that could occur if there was a completely new cast.

There is also a welcome option to go “old school” (with an achievement thrown in for good measure), and play with the original graphics and SCUMM interface, with the new music but no voice over. This did bring too mind 2 things, firstly how much graphics have moved on, and secondly how annoying the “optimised” new controls can be. While the new controls are for the most part fine, there are occasions when I ended up wishing that I could have the old controls with the updated graphics as the joypad option selection was unreliable leading to having to go through more steps than I would have in the original game.

Aside from this irritation though, as a fan of the series I was more than happy with The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition.

From the perspective of a non fan though, I don’t think that they will be overly impressed with the game, as the graphics while an improvement are not fully up to todays standards. There is also the frustration element where you can get stuck on puzzles. Finally the game is quite short and is easily completable in under 3 hours if you know what you are doing and there is even an achievement for it.

My Recommendation

Consider

If you like the Monkey Island Games, or point and click adventures then this is a worthwhile purchase, since the game has not lost any of its charm since when it was first released. If you are not a fan then its probably best to test the trial version first to see what you think

Screenshots