After over a decade, the Monkey Island series returned with its sixth entry of the series. This game also brought back the series’ original writer Ron Gilbert (assisted by Dave Grossman) as well as other miscellaneous crew and cast from the prior entries of the series. It’s also the first entry since 1997 to be in 2D (unless you want to count the HD Special Editions of the first two games that came out in 2009 and 2010).
Despite some muddled information before, this game is intended to be set after all five past entries of the series and seems to be attempting to serve as a kind of bookend for the franchise as well.
As always, you take control of the hapless pirate Guybrush Threepwood, this time a lot older and telling the story to his son of how he finally discovered the much teased but never reavealed “Secret” of Monkey Island. This involves you therefore, no surprise, trekking back to Monkey Island surprisingly early in the game, before you start what I consider to be the actual meat of the game in Part 4 of the game’s five parts.
In case you missed it, I just posted reviews of all five prior games to put this review in context.
On with the review…
Gameplay: 4½/5 – The interface is traditional point-and-click fare and very stripped down to simply the left and right mouse buttons. You can also make Guybrush run by double clicking. I do miss the elegance of Curse’s interface, and I might even say the verb-bar of the originals, but at the same time the interface is very straightforward and doesn’t impede on your trekking through the game world.
Two minor complaints I have are the reason the gameplay doesn’t get a full score. Firstly, with some items in your inventory, the combination clicking doesn’t always seem to work for whatever reason, but I’ve noticed it gets fixed by simply moving the cursor off the inventory and back again. Secondly, I don’t really like that descriptor texts are written in a smarmy way. I always felt the jokes were best left to character dialogue. Neither of these problems are gamebreaking obviously.
Graphics: 3½/5 – The game managed to cause a small stir due to the extremely stylized graphic look and while the backlash for it was completely disproportionate (and juvenile), I’m also going to be honest about the fact that I just don’t like the art-style very much. I will give the game credit however that Terror Island and Brr Muda are great locations and easily the best part of the game for me. In fact, it’s a bit sad you spend so little time on Terror Island but the icy Brr Muda island was hands down my favourite location and home to some of my favourite characters. Also, I did like Iron Rose and Putra. But a lot of the characters just look doinky.
Animation: 4½/5 – I can’t really criticise the animations and there is a LOT of details in this. Not just in the cutscenes, but there’s rich character, incidental animations, facial expressions etc. However, I did not like the high amount of close-ups both in-game and during cutscenes. However, the cutscenes did feature high amounts of comedy as per usual. Also, Gilbert really wanted to bring back the gross out humour from Monkey 2, which is honestly not something I horribly missed. The game isn’t luckily too over-the-top with it, so I won’t penalise the game for it.
In fact, I think the main thing about the cutscenes which I hated were the sudden cutaways to Guybrush and his son which interrupted the game WAY too often during Parts 1-3. Thanks to the open-wide structure of Part 4, they were less annoying there.
Music: 3½/5 – I rank this about the same as Tales of Monkey Island. My biggest gripe is that the soundtrack is just very, very reserved. The powerful percussion of the fifth game is completely gone and while there’s a suggestion of the classic Monkey Island sound, most of the themes don’t really stand out. However, on LeChuck’s ship all the themes are borrowing bars from LeChuck’s theme and I quite like the audio on Terror Island and Brr Muda, plus the ending does have a nice doomy vibe. The soundtrack sadly lacks any truly notable hits but it does feel like Monkey Island (especially during Part 4), so that’s why I’m willing to give it an extra ½ point.
Sound: 4/5 – Several voices from past games luckily make their return including Alexandra Boyd as Elaine, Denny Delk as Murray, Rob Paulsen as the Look-Out and Bob, Leilani Jones as the Voodoo Lady & Carla, Neil Ross as Wally and of course Dominic Armato as Guybrush Threepwood. Gavin Hammon who voiced Stan in Tales also returns. Sadly, the late Earl Boen (who passed away this year) didn’t return to voice LeChuck and the role has instead been passed on to Jess Harnell (who voiced the Shopkeeper in Secret of Monkey Island).
The main positives of the voice-cast: Armato is great as always and the returning voice-actors all do a decent effort, though many of them only play incidental roles (Stan excluded). JB Blanc as Gullet and Melissa Medina as Putra were my absolute favourites among the new voice-actors.
While there are no voice performances which I’d call “bad”, I do have to say that I didn’t care for the game’s new villains. And Jess Harnell’s LeChuck sadly just sounds like his Shopkeeper voice. Mind you, Earl Boen is impossible to top, but I do wish Harnell would have done something else with his voice. S. Scott Bullock also mysteriously didn’t return to voice Otis, with the role going to Sean Kenin, who sounds oddly way more manly.
Plot: 3/5 – I’m going to be very, very blunt and say that when the game gets started, I absolutely hated the story premise. The game commits the same sin as Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse by relying way too heavily on familiarity with earlier games from the series (specifically Monkey Island 1). However, during Part 4 and the Quest for the Golden Keys, my mood definitely changed and I started having fun with the game again. The game’s ending is, again, very meta in reference to the fact that discovering the actual Secret will be a disappointment. However, I actually felt it was an appropriate ending to the absurd story. It did not have the bang-zoom factor of Monkey Island 1, 3 and 4 – but I guess, as a positive, it’s very much the game’s own style of ending.
Minor Note for Monkey Island Nerds: While I thought it was sweet of the game to acknowledge the plots of all prior games via the Scrapbook, I did notice a glaring plot hole when Guybrush and Elaine refer to someone in-game as “Herman Toothrot” and not by the character’s actual name.
Difficulty: Easy and slightly less easy – I actually played the game through on the Harder difficulty first which I think was a mistake. The game really is surprisingly easy, except in Part 4 where you have way more puzzles and things to look out for. But for instance, Terror Island is (almost) just a giant locked room puzzle. If you’ve never played a point and click adventure before, I recommend actually playing the game through with the easier difficulty first and then upgrading to the harder because the extra twists to each puzzle will make that mode feel way more rewarding.
And if you’re completely stuck, the game does have a Hint-tool. There is also some slight puzzle randomization, so beware of this on later playthroughs.
Score: 77% – Return to Monkey Island was a very mixed experience. I really didn’t like the first half of the game, but once you’re sailing around the Carribbean and solving puzzles on multiple islands, the game actually becomes a lot of fun. The difficulty is pretty casual with maybe one or two slightly harder puzzles, which I think adventure game newbies will enjoy. And yes, if you wanted to get a massive nostalgia trip from Monkey Island 1, I think you’ll enjoy the first three Parts as well. I was just not a big fan of the story or art-style, but as an adventure game this is perfectly serviceable and even genuinely fun for good long portions of it.
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