| 20 July 2010
Monkey Island 2 is regarded by many fans as the best game in the Monkey Island series, and much like last year's special edition release, Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge is an attractive package to both newcomers and veterans to the series. Fans of the original now get the chance to experience the game again with beautiful hand-drawn artwork, new controls, reworked music and some extremely well done voice acting, while newcomers get to experience a modern take on one of gamings defining moments.
However, despite bearing this classic status among gamers who experienced it the first time around, those playing Monkey Island 2 for the first time probably won't hold the game in such high regard, as underneath the shiny new visuals and re-worked soundtrack beats the heart of an archaic and cantankerous game – one which revels in presenting the player with puzzles which are either relentlessly illogical, or require a good deal of back-tracking or trial-and-error guesswork to overcome.
Whilst these gripes can't be levelled at all of the puzzles in the game, they occur frequently enough that they can't be ignored, especially during the game's second act, which is one long, protracted trawl from puzzle to puzzle which seems to last forever. A large part of the problem during this section is that the game presents you with too many tasks at once, and doesn't provide enough guidance as to how, or in which order to accomplish them. A consequence of this is that when you run into problems, you'll find that you have far too many options to explore to allow you to quickly get back on track.
In an attempt to alleviate this, the game does provide some help in solving its puzzles by employing a hint system, which gives the player progressively more obtuse hints every time they request one. There are instances though, where this system becomes less than helpful, and it's usually when you need it the most; namely, when you are in areas where there are more than one puzzle to solve – in which case the game will usually give you a hint to a puzzle you have already solved; or when you know what you need to do to solve a puzzle but can't figure out how to do it; an important distinction which the hint system often doesn't help with.
Worse still, are the puzzles which require you to perform specific tasks within a set (and usually extremely tight) time limit; something which isn't made any easier by the games controls. The controls, which work well for the majority of the game, clearly weren't designed to be used with this degree of speed and precision in mind, and this leads to further problems with the game's puzzles, as it makes it difficult to figure out whether you're doing something wrong, or whether you're just not doing it fast enough.
All of these issues become much harder to swallow when you realise that, despite its faults, Monkey Island 2 is a funny, charismatic and entertaining game, and there's a lot about this special edition remake to like. The updated graphics are gorgeous, while the new music and voice acting are superb – though judging by the number of times Guybrush will describe an object as “nice”, you'll wish that they'd recorded a few more lines of dialogue.
The game is also genuinely very funny (for the most part at least, though there are a few absolute clangers in there), and when it's not being intentionally hostile toward the player, the game is a lot of fun to play.
For fans of the original game, Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge will be a wonderful trip down memory lane, and one which has been gorgeously recast. For everyone else though, the game's antagonistic attitude towards the player, and occasionally frustrating puzzles will probably be enough to put many gamers off, which is something of a shame, as despite being somewhat antiquated, this is otherwise a very witty and fun game.
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