"The Secret of Monkey Island™ Not about monkeys at all."

I had better come clean from the start and admit that, being a relative newcomer to video games, I had never heard of Monkey Island™ and had no preconceptions about it, other than that it must be about monkeys. In fact I was suspicious of the game for many reasons. I didn't like the idea of a game about monkeys. I didn't like the idea of a graphic adventure, and I really didn't like the idea of playing a game on my computer instead of a console. Having been persuaded to overcome all these prejudices I finally embarked on my first Monkey Island™ game (on a mac) with a small degree of trepidation.

The story concerns the exploits of one Guybrush Threepwood, (cue many jokes about his not very piratical name), an innocent potential pirate. I say innocent because he is not skilled in the ways of piracy, not yet at any rate, but he has ambitions. He has arrived on an island, determined to be a pirate, and tries to find a ship, some treasure, some friends and some skills to help him achieve his goal. You are told what to do immediately by an old man, the "lookout", who is, of course, blind as a bat, and so you find the nearest pirate bar and a lot of pirates. I am sure there is a more appropriate collective noun, but I am not sure what it might be: a parade of pirates?, a plethora of pirates? But I digress. You have to successfully overcome three trials: one of theft, one of fighting and the third of finding a treasure, to get the map, the ship and some crew, because as they explain: you don't become a pirate just by asking. One thing leads to another and on one of the quests Guybrush meets and falls in love with the governor of Melee Island, Elaine. After they share a romantic tryst near the gently lapping ocean she is abducted by the ghost of the dead pirate Le Chuck, and eventually you end up on Monkey Island™ itself, in a desperate attempt to find Elaine and defeat Le Chuck. I can't explain the story more than this and so far as it went there had not been a monkey to be seen anywhere, so that was alright by me.

All the accoutrements of good piracy are present: only not quite as you might expect. There are maps which turn out to be dance steps, the aforesaid governor of the island who is, frankly, gorgeous; grog, which has the worrying side effect of melting mugs (I am sure they were pewter tankards) within seconds, no actual pirates sailing ships, just a strange ship salesman called Stan, who really does not seem to want to sell you a ship despite many hours of complex haggling over the price, and who wears a patterned jacket which does not follow his movements when he lifts his arms: the pattern, that is, not the jacket. At least he didn't have a monkey. Oh, and of course, there is sword fighting.

One of the best things about Monkey Island™ is the sword fighting: with the skillful use of insults being the deciding factor. Why have no other games taken up this idea? You don't actually have to fight anyone at all. While wandering down the island paths you bump into various pirates and can challenge them to a dual. As in all good pirate skirmishes, the fight is accompanied with a bit of chat. Your opponent will insult you, and you, as Guybrush, must select from a number of possible responses. A good response will render your attacks more effective. All fighting is automatic, but you have to select the correct response to your opponent's taunts in order to secure victory. This is a useful life skill and should be taught in all schools.

You can find many of these responses through trial and error. The game gives you a head start. Insult: You fight like a dairy farmer. Respond: How appropriate, you fight like a cow, and you may win the fight! You are challenged to come up with the best response to a variety of insults such as "Soon you'll be wearing my sword like a shish kebab! " or even "There are no words for how disgusting you are". Get the wrong retort, and your opponent gains the advantage, get too many wrong and you lose the fight. However you don't really lose as you will have learned another new insult since your opponent's taunts will be added to your list ,as will his responses to your insults. Eventually you will build up a bank of possibilities from which you can select the best taunts and responses when you challenge the great sword fighter. Still no monkeys.

The music is just as it should be for a comic pirate game. Good Jolly Rogering piraty music, based on folk rhythms. Gentle with a catchy tune played with a recorder sound. Clever little tunes in a minor key using tubas and wind instruments. When there is no music there are nice sounds of bells tolling and water lapping and seagulls crying.

The graphics are great, actually. Of course there are no FMVs or anything like that. After all, the game was first released in 1990, but I liked them. Colourful and clear, lots of blues and browns, the jungle is green and lush, the circus tent sparkles with colour, the lights of the town show brightly on the island. Talk to a pirate and his face is featured on the whole screen and is very realistic with beard and three cornered hat. The control commands are written in purple on a black band at the bottom of the screen.

The controls can be selected from this same screen and they are: give, open, close, look up, look at , talk to, use, push, pull. Basically point and click. I found these easy to operate but it was sometimes hard to know which one to select and a bit tedious to keep up the momentum of pointing and clicking. Every action has a command: walk to a door and you can look at it and /or open it. Then you have to click again to go through it. Look at a poster or pick it up or use it or pull it. To move you place the cursor to where you want to go and Guybrush moves there...you can speed up this process by moving the cursor to the destination and then moving it again as soon as you can as Guybrush walks into the next screen. Sometimes you had to make him move quickly and this took some effort though fortunately there were no monkeys to get in the way. A nice feature is that when Guybrush is outside on the island he appears as a small figure against the whole island and a simple point and click will have him walking over forests and hills to the next selected location without you having to do any more pointing or clicking.

All this pointing and clicking can get a bit tiresome after a while, as you may have to try many different, and often extremely unlikely things to see if they will work. But then, of course, that is exactly the point. You collect many various items that get added to your inventory and these all appear on the select screen. You then have to match the item to the puzzle. So, for example, you find a rope, and a ....ah, once you get to Monkey Island™ you find your first monkey and you can feed it bananas from your item list. That, at least was straightforward.

However you cannot go wrong. There is no death, and if you get something wrong you can just try it again. As I soon discovered: the game is not based on failure but on success, though that can be a long time coming as the conversations can last quite a while if you want to get every possible response. Also some things you think are to be used, for example, a dog's bone, have just been put there to confuse you. So you have to keep trying things out matching the items you have collected with whatever it is you want to do. The solutions are rarely obvious.

The game may be short for the experts, but it can take a long time to complete if you are not used to this style of play. I was lucky in that I had my very own expert to turn to for clues and hints when things got too hard for me to figure out for myself, but I can imagine that without a FAQ (which unfortunately may spoil the sense of discovery) or a patient friend to guide you, the game could prove to be very frustrating indeed. But then, that is exactly why it is so good. even with the appearance of the occasional monkey.

So I must admit that, fun as the game is, it is also hard, especially if you are not used to lateral thinking. This is not for the logical minded. There are no bosses or shops or levels or weapons: the usual things I expect in a game. Just lots of very funny (both peculiar and hilarious) puzzles to solve. I mentioned the monkey who you know likes bananas, as indeed all monkeys do, but one banana was not enough, and how on earth do you get more? This involved a highly convoluted series of events which resulted in a stone being dropped on another large stone that was out of sight, and it having to create exactly the right trajectory to fall on a ...well, you will have to figure that out for yourself.

To summarise: there is sword fighting, love, marriage, cannibals, salesmen, a circus, a prison, one troll, one seagull, one rubber chicken, one voodoo lady, ghosts, ships, a ghost ship, root beer, grog, rats, piranha poodles, pirates both employed and unemployed and ...well, the odd monkey: one with three heads, the one that loves bananas, and one giant monkey head that needs its right ear cleaned.

So what more do you need in a game that really is not about monkeys at all?

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/06/07, Updated 06/12/07