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This is a review that requires I put on a Kevlar jacket; beware that I am about to commit adventure game heresy. The Secret of Monkey Island, released by LucasFilm Games in 1990, is one of the most beloved games in the entire adventure game canon. It regularly appears near or at the top of players' best lists and is used as a standard by which other adventure games (especially third-person quest games) are measured. In SOMI, you play Guybrush Threepwood, a young pirate wannabe. He comes to Melee Island in search of a band of pirates to join. Unfortunately, a pirate ghost named LeChuck has been terrorizing this part of the Caribbean, turning all of the local pirates into wimpy slackers. The first thing Guybrush has to do is fulfill three challenges in order to qualify for pirate status. These include thievery, treasure hunting, and sword fighting. After these things are accomplished, the plot finally kicks in, with evil LeChuck kidnaping the pretty governor of Melee Island and spiriting her off to Monkey Island. Guess who has to rescue her. SOMI uses the famous LucasArts SCUMM engine, and the interface is an efficient DOS-era standard, with a collection of verbs you use to create simple commands ("Use the rubber chicken on the cable"). The game is actually quite well-written, with terrific jokes and humor throughout. A particularly amusing highlight is a group of nutrition-minded cannibals on Monkey Island. "Let's eat him!" "But think of your arteries!" The conversations are pretty good as well, though they do get repetitive sometimes, and you can't click through them (I hate that). By the way, the sword fighting is not action-oriented at all. I won't give away what skill is needed, but it's a perfectly pure adventure sequence. SOMI is long, rich, and involved. So why didn't I like it more? Perhaps it's my innate bias against third-person inventory fests. Perhaps it's the exhausting amount of to-ing and fro-ing in the game's final third. Perhaps it's the fairly juvenile humor level. Mostly, however, it's just that this game lacked that ineffable "you must play me" quality that the best games have. Throughout my 20 hours playing the game, I never really cared one way or another what happened. It all seemed terribly trivial. This, of course, is just my take on it. Don't forget, I didn't like Sam and Max for some of the same reasons (though I greatly admire Full Throttle). If you're a third-person fan, if you love other LucasArts titles, or if you're pirate crazy, you'll probably enjoy The Secret of Monkey Island much more than I did. A few technical notes. I could never get the floppy disk version of this game to run. I played the game from the more recent Monkey Island Madness CD, which includes both Monkey Island 1 and 2, as well as a demo of MI3. The game has no audible dialog, but it does have sound effects and some lovely music. Final Grade: C If you liked The Secret of Monkey Island: System Requirements: |
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