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After the successful special edition of The Secret of Monkey Island, Lucasarts has decided to apply a similar make-over to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. To many, including us, this title is the best adventure game ever to be made, with its excellent mix of cunning puzzles and involving plot.
If you haven’t come across the game before, it picks up the story of Guybrush Threepwood a few years after the events of the original Monkey Island. With his tales of defeating the ghost pirate LeChuck starting to bore other pirates, Guybrush sets his eyes on a new prize: the treasure of Big Whoop. Along the way he accidentally provides the means to resurrect LeChuck, and it’s up to you to help him find the treasure, get the girl (Governor Elaine Marley) and defeat LeChuck once and for all (until you play Monkey Island 3 and the following games, that is).
The special edition lovingly updates the original’s graphics, but keeps the look and feel intact. So, all of the characters and backdrops have been redrawn and reanimated in high resolution, but they look like the originals. As with the first special edition pressing F1 lets you switch between the new and old, so you can compare the two or indulge in some retro gaming.
Speech has been added into the game, and it’s a welcome addition. The same group of actors that provided the voices for the more recent games provides the speech here. It’s a talented bunch and they breathe life into the genuinely laugh-out-loud dialogue.
Lucasarts has also rerecorded the soundtrack using a band, rather than the computer-generated music of the original. However, this introduces one big problem: iMuse. In the original game, iMuse was the technology used to seamlessly blend one scene’s music into another scene’s music, such as when you moved from outside into a room. While this could be solved with programming in the original, with a real band, it’s harder to do. With a variety of musical tricks, Lucasart’s has managed to replicate the original perfectly. The seamless shifting of music adds atmosphere and depth that helps pull you into the game.
During certain scenes you can press ‘A’ to get an audio commentary from the original design team. They appear in silhouette at the bottom of the screen, just like in Mystery Science Theater 3000, and talk you through design choices, problems and other decisions. It’s perhaps a feature for die-hard fans only, but it’s great to have the option to go behind the scenes in this way.
A final change is the control system. While the original had a toolbar at the bottom that gave you every action Guybrush could perform (Pick Up, Talk, etc), the special edition dispenses with this and gives you a full screen view. Instead, right-clicking on an object or person gives us a choice of actions to perform. It’s actually a big improvement over the original’s interface.
Fortunately, the plot and game remain completely unchanged (bar the strange decision to remove the title sequence with the dancing monkeys). It’s here that the game’s a massive triumph. Set over a series of islands, it’s your job to recover the four map pieces and find the treasure of Big Whoop.
At each stage there’s enough clues about what you’re supposed to do to keep the game moving, while leaving a big enough gap that you have to use your brain in order to work out what to do to progress. In these terms the game has not aged at all, and in many ways it’s still leaps and bounds ahead of more modern titles.
Monkey Island 2 remains the best adventure game ever to be made and the special edition brings it bang up-to-date. Whether you’re a massive fan of the original or new to the series, this is well worth the £6.99. Buy it now.
| Details | |
|---|---|
| Price | £7 |
| Details | www.lucasarts.com |
| Rating | ***** |
