Many folks might remember when back in the ‘90s the age of adventure and quest games began. Back then, there were the fantastic periods of Day of the Tentacle from LucasArt and, of course, the magnificent Monkey Island series with its pirate character Guybrush Threepwood. This last title’s longevity tells it all about why this game has rewritten the history of adventure genre. However its road was not one without barriers while few years ago LucasArts announced that it will not produce anymore this game and will focus exclusively on Star Wars which was more financially profitable.
Fortunately, this negative approach did not last very long while the former president of LucasArts, Darrell Rodriguez, managed to revive last year this company’s adventure games segment. This was all possible thanks again to the Monkey Island title, or better said, an HD remake of the first game from this series. LucasArts started a partnership with Telltale Games to create a new serie – Tales of Monkey Island, distributed in episodic format. These new titles were very popular among computer games fans and due to this success we all can enjoy again the adventures in a new title – Monkey Island 2 : LeChuck’s Revenge. This was relaunched in a special edition with re-worked graphics, voice acting and many other goodies. The gameplay still remains related to the one back in the ‘90s this being a great remake with almost the same story, with its good and bad parts.
The first impact we have when starting this game is the new graphics which looks great but, at the same time, it’s very loyal to the old look of the game. Moreover, the designers have pushed the limits even further and with just a push of a button during the adventure we can switch the aspect of the game between the new graphics and the old one, used in 1991. As interesting as it may sound, we shall stick though the the new great looking image, maybe only those very nostalgic about back days will switch the view to a more pixels-rich one.
As in the first remake, all the dialogues in this game were recorded using the distribution that gave life to the characters in Curse of Monkey Island (the third part of this series). Guybrush’s voice shines again with the help of Dominic Armato’s brilliant voice which makes the pirate rather charming in this game. The game does not lack Earl Boen’s voice as well, in the role of evil pirate LeChuck, enemy for eternity of Threepwood.
Perhaps the most important improvement over the previous interface was that the rather hard method of choosing stuff. It was replaced by an elegant interface, while a long right click offers immediate access to main objects and via a simple click on scroll wheel the inventory pops up. The hints system presented in the first remake as well has been introduced in this title also, therefore it’s easy to highlight the possibility of setting active objects like in new generation active games.
This new remake, when it comes to system requirements, can be play on a PC equipped with a single core processor and 1GB Ram. As for the video card, it can be an integrated one as well, however the framerate will visible decrease. Monkey Island still remains a great name among adventure games and we hope it will continue with more and more titles to satisfy its long-lasting fans.