The Secret of Monkey Island

"One Of The Best PC. Games Ever"

One of my favorite games is The Secret of Monkey Island. You play Guybrush Threepwood, a wannabe' pirate who just happened to be ''Somewhere in the Carribean''. This is another title that made Ron Gilbert (Maniac Mansion) sucessful at Lucasfilm, and this is also the first Lucasfilm game to make use of the can't get stuck/can't die policy. For it's time it is probably one of the best PC games of 1990 if not for computer in general.

Plot: 8/10

In Monkey Island, you play our young pants tucked in socks, buckleshoe hero who wants to become a pirate. And it's not that easy to become a pirate, Guybrush has to go through ''The Three Trials'' to become one and then his love gets taken away and he needs to rescue her from the fearsome ghost pirate LeChuck. Throughout the game the theme stays heavily with the plot, any of a number of things can be done to get past the puzzles.

Graphics: 9/10

Personally I always thought the two first Monkey Island games had the best graphics, it was like a comedy movie. The graphics here get really lifelike, showing the characters during long dialogs as they would look in real life (Elaine Marly is one pretty woman too). This is one of the features I wish they did not take out of the other games, It gave you a nice interaction with the other characters, it made so many people have so much more personality (including Guybrush himself). The pallettes were chosen right for the game too. I'll only count 1 point off because the objects not being shown at all unless on the game play screen (that was sort of a carryover from Maniac Mansion).

Sound: 7/10

Contrary to common belief, The Secret of Monkey Island had sound card support, it was just really flaky (when I had the game installed on my current computer, the sound card would only work on MI 1 time out of 6). But to make up for it, the internal speaker music sounds excellent, using two to 3 voices. It can be complex at times so thats what brings it up to 4. The Midis are even better.

Gameplay: 10/10

The gameplay in Monkey Island is some of the best gameplay I have ever seen in computer games of this time. Unlike the SCUMM system and GUI for Maniac Mansion (16 color version), which is slow and sluggish in cursor and can't use a mouse, Monkey Island supports gamepads, Mice, and Keyboard. You even have hot keys usually using the first letter of the command or action with is really useful in time intensice applications (such as distracting someone and pulling a rabbit from behind their back before they see it). The use of a Mouse makes the game even better as you can use the other button to go through a couple commands on the fly that you may need to use REALLY quick. I think this should have become a standard for PC games.

Overall: 10/10

What The Secret of Monkey Island lacks in graphics and sound it more than makes up for in charm, humor, plot and gameplay, the most important elemements to any Monkey Game. Ahh the old days of pure pixelated fun, will it ever become mainstream again?

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/02, Updated 01/16/02