The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

The Good
The Secret of Monkey Island was first introduced to gamers back in the days of floppy disks, hard drives and DOS. Players instantly fell in love with the plucky, wannabe pirate, the zany Carribean setting and the inventory-based puzzles.

Even today, the gaming world is, arguably, divided up between the people who have played, The Secret of Monkey Island , versus people who want to play the classic adventure game.

The Special Edition includes the original Secret Of Monkey Island game, as well as a new edition. You can easily switch between the different versions at anytime.

The new edition features vastly superior graphics, talented voice actors reading the funny dialogue and a [mostly] smooth control scheme. Guybrush is easy to control, mostly, and the special edition improvements make a classic game even better.

It's especially nice that the main voice actors seem to be the same people involved with the third Monkey Island game (The Curse Of Monkey Island was the first game in the series to introduce voice actors).

My complaints are minor, but worth mentioning.

The Bad
The game play mechanics are, mostly, fine. Originally, the game used a mouse - hence, "point and click" adventure game - and the transition from mouse to the Xbox 360 controller is fine, mostly.

Sometimes it can be a tad difficult to do certain commands quickly. This only becomes a bit of a problem once or twice, but it's worth mentioning. I would say that the game play mechanics in The Secret of Monkey Island 2 (Special Edition) are perfect, so the designers may have taken more in between the two games.

Lastly, I gotta complain about one puzzle in the game. Eventually, you have to crack a randomly generated safe combination. It was a tough puzzle in the original game, and remains so in the remake.

Yes, I realize that it was a part of the original Secret of Monkey Island game, but it still gives me headaches. Part of me wishes that an alternative solution was made available. Maybe, it's just a personal gripe.

The Bottom Line
The Secret of Monkey Island was a great game to begin with, and is made even greater with this Special Edition. This is certainly the best version of the game and well-worth the purchase price. I wish that more Lucasfilms Adventure games were ported over to the Xbox 360.