The Curse of Monkey Island

The Good
It's glossy and well put together. The puzzles are ok, and they've got 2 difficulty settings. Murray is nearly amusing and the soundtrack is classic, but it is from the original Monkey Island anyway. Some of the voices are perfect and don't spoil anything (Le Chuck). It's not a BAD game or anything. If it was released without the Monkey Island label I'd probably enjoy it more; since it has the label you assume the games are going to be similar in some way, and this one ain't.

The Bad
The graphics, despite being quite artistic and well drawn (especially the clouds), are just wrong. Guybrush has been mutated. His height has tripled and he looks younger. In fact according to sources, he IS younger. Apparently Guybrush is 20 in this one, yet he's 21 in Monkey Island 2. The characters pixelate and look a little ugly when they go into the distance. The game seems very aware of the quality of it's predecessors, so bounces ideas and jokes off them frequently. But it's changed everything about what made the first 2 games so sublime. The magic has gone. I know it's unrealistic to say the game should never have used speech; but these old characters are immortal and it shouldn't have been done. Guybrush should never have a voice, not that the guy who does it is in any way bad because he's not, but because it immediatly ruins the character that your subconcious plants in in your brain. The text of the first 2 games meant that you could give your own voices to the characters, and you could laugh at the quality of the writing instead of the delivery of it. Imagine if someone remade the first game with speech, all those funny lines of dialogue would have to be read out perfectly so as to keep them funny. It's hard to explain. But this is why so many scripts are better than the films or programmes themselves. Ever read Calvin & Hobbes? Imagine if a voice actor did Hobbes voice. Travesty. Anyway back to the game and everything...Monkey Island 3 is not funny. It's just not. All the parts and lines seem overracted in case we don't get the joke or something, and often the joke is needlessly explained in detail by some overly hyperactive character. This is again why it would be better without speech. Turn it off, just use text. It's better. The insult swordfighting, once great, is tacked on unessecarily. Though not quite as shamelessly or as pointlessly as Monkey 4. The locations aren't that interesting. The game didn't really need to made considering the ending of the 2nd, which was terrific. It would be better if it stopped while the series was legendary as it once was. They could have made an original game instead of a sequel, but then it might not sell I guess.

The Bottom Line
A solid and good game, but a shadow of it's parents. Slick, stylish, glossy, yet charmless. Lacks the Ron Gilbert magic that was so present in the first 2 and unfortunately does something to dampen the allure of them as well. The 2nd was worse than the 1st (barely), the 3rd is worse than the 2nd, and the 4th is worse than the 3rd. Stop now for the love of God and make a game like Grim Fandango again.

The Good
Game designer/programmer Ron Gilbert is the equivalent of a folk hero for several thousands of old school adventure game fans. He was the brain behind 1987's Maniac Mansion, a seminal graphic adventure game with unprecedented atmosphere and storytelling; the brain behind 1990's The Secret of Monkey Island, another milestone that took absolutely everything about adventure games to the next level; and the brain behind 1991's Monkey Island 2, an epic, refined and outlandish piece of art that I seriously believe is the best adventure game ever made. He left LucasArts soon after for reasons that were discussed to death.

Monkey Island 3 has nothing to do with Ron Gilbert. It has everything to do with LucasArts' greed to make some new bucks off the revival of their flagship adventure game series several years after Gilbert's departure, when LucasArts was very probably faced with diminishing sales and critical reception.

This game's popularity baffles me. Then again, maybe not, as I can see where it's coming from. Monkey3 is like an Indiana Jones film NOT directed by Steven Spielberg, or like a Harry Potter novel NOT written by JK Rowling. It lacks the soul of the series, or worse yet, it is replaced with a different soul. Obviously, this is not sensed by those who dashed through the originals in a superficial way. It is only felt unanimously by fans who embraced Monkey1 and Monkey2 to their hearts, or were even obsessed about them, like I was in my late teens. See, not obsessing about a game series is no sin. (In fact, the world probably doesn't need more hardcore game geeks.) But trying to argue how a counterfeit entry to the series is on a par with the true classic entries... is plain wrong. Monkey3 has superior graphics and music compared to the originals, which seem to have dazzled several gamers, but this is the only upside I can think of.

The Bad
Monkey Island 3 was designed and led by the Ackley-Ahern duo, with only one of them present in the team of Monkey2 (as an animator). While they prove to be capable game developers by and large, in the delicate, nuanced, semi-serious, and very personal world of Ron Gilbert, they move and thrash around like a particularly clumsy elephant in a porcelain store.
Regardless if they do or do not understand what made the original games work, they prove utterly unable to emulate their general weirdness, their general Ron Gilbertness. Now it's hard to define this Ron Gilbertness in mere words and give it a semblance of justice -- but for the purposes of this review, we can try: bittersweet, spooky, unpredictable, odd, offbeat, atmospheric, enchanting, smart, subversive, tragicomic and poignant; definitely poignant. The design in Monkey3 sometimes manages to be remotely spooky and/or atmospheric (the theater scene comes to mind), but that's where similarities end.

The Bottom Line
Aimed squarely at prospective new fans who were probably still preteens during the run of the original Monkey Island games, Monkey Island 3 is an OK if unremarkable adventure game when taken strictly in isolation. It looks well, plays well and sounds great. But it's not a proper Monkey Island entry. What LucasArts does here is effectively betraying the old fans (and Ron Gilbert himself, I guess), and producing something lighter, less profound, less edgy and more "PG" than Monkey Island 1 and 2, all for the sake of catering to a "fresher" audience. Out of cold calculation, the Monkey Island soul is replaced by a cheaper, downsized one that proves incapable of emulating the feeling, mood and peculiar jokes of the original, despite trying hard.
All this results in that no real fan of the series would honestly cheer this game. They just feel it's fake, like a changeling. What is there to cheer about an Indiana Jones movie deprived of Spielberg?..

The Good
I'll be brief and let me just keep it more to the point...

• I have mixed feeling about the new cartoon style graphics. For one thing, the graphics are not pixelated anymore, they are stylish and sharp. The animations feel smooth and are of great quality.

• The usual point and click gameplay style is solid. The new inventory system was an improvement.

• The character voices are well acted, cartoon voice style. The sounds and music are indeed of film quality, maybe even better.

• The story. Despite Ron Gilbert not being involved in this sequel, I think the people who created it did a very good job in connecting the story with the events of the second and first game. This sequel is not only a proper continuation, it explains successfully what happened in the bizarre ending of the previous game (which many people hated). Quite frankly I was somewhat impressed.

• The tone and sense of humour of the game world is just about right for a Monkey Island adventure I suppose. Some jokes are spot on; the cultural references are there; the characters are colorful.

• I found some puzzles very challenging and original. The game gives the player possibilities of puzzle solving order and exploration. The length of the adventure is more than adequate.
  
  The Bad
  - First of all, bear in mind that I find the whole Monkey Island thing a bit overrated. I'm a grumpy gamer, I admit. These adventure games with juvenile stories in the middle between the totally absurd and the comedic are not my favorite genre. They just don't hook me. Maybe I'm getting too old for this but I found it way too infantile and sometimes lame; I felt some irreverent humour was missing (I like Simon better than Guybrush).

• I personally didn't like that cartoonish style too much. It kind of makes more sense to the tone of the game, but I just didn't like it (see above).

• The puzzles here do advance the story and the goals are clear, but I was disappointed with some nonsensical solutions. The game also features unconnected solutions you get to find before the problem arrives. Those are called backward puzzles.
  
  The Bottom Line
  I would still recommend playing it if you enjoyed the previous games. I preferred MI 1 and 2. They are funnier and let you use more your imagination. But nevertheless we do see a leap forward in graphics and sound after the intermission.