With Return to Monkey Island having been released this month, and with it following on from the events of the second original game, I knew I just had to play through the first two. With The Secret of Monkey Island I chose to play using the dreadful new artwork, mainly so that I could hear the new music mixes and spoken dialogue. Loading up the sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, there was actually the option from the start to enjoy the original game as it was, but with the dialogue also spoken. I fully expected that would be the way I chose to play, that is, until I saw how expressive and surprisingly good the updated graphics were this time around. Spoilers for the first game to follow.
The game begins with my new favourite phrase 'in medias re', basically the story begins halfway through. Haplass pirate Guybrush Threepwood is dangling over a huge pit, a treasure chest in one hand, his other holding the rope that is preventing him from falling to his doom. Threepwood's former love interest, Elaine Marley appears, and it is while asking how he came to be in this situation that the story skips back to the start of the game. Threepwood had arrived on Scabb Island as part of his search for a legendary treasure known as Big Whoop. He discovers while there, that the treasure was discovered on a mysterious island, and that the people who found it split their map of the place into four pieces so that no one else would ever discover it. Unfortunately, Threepwood also encounters Largo LeGrande, a pint-sized bully who used to be LeChuck's right hand man. This inadvertently results in him providing LeGrande with the final ingredients needed to resurrect LeChuck's body as a zombie.
With LeChuck back to life and wanting Guybrush dead, the young pirate realises that the power that Big Whoop is said to provide may be enough for him to escape LeChuck's clutches forever...
I enjoyed replaying The Secret of Monkey Island, yet it also made me realise that that first game, while good, didn't have as much of an impression as its sequel. Everything this time around is so much better. There are more wacky characters to interact with, the story is a lot more involved, the wonderful pixel graphics are more detailed, and this features some of the very best video game music that was ever created, something I still believe today. While you can play the game using the original point and click interface (of commands and items being kept in the bottom third of the screen), the updated controls thankfully don't follow the cumbersome controls of the first re-make. Instead, there is a much better feeling control scheme, more like what The Curse of Monkey Island did. My memory of how to do the first game was a bit fuzzy, I imagined it would be the same for LeChuck's Revenge, turns out it wasn't. Outside of one moment (where I briefly forgot to get the cook out the kitchen you had to rattle some bins), I remembered all the puzzles and solutions, and this is a game where it doesn't mind you doing things out of step. Even if it makes no sense for where you are in the story, you are able to collect items before you are aware (within the story) that you require them.
After the first chapter set primarily on Scabb Island is completed the game world opens up to include a further two islands. Phatt Island is a dictatorship run by the obese, bed-bound Governor Phatt, while Booty Island is a place that is permanently celebrating Mardi Gras. The three islands aren't exactly bursting with locations to visit, Booty and Phat in particular are surprisingly sparse with just three or four places of interest each. Later chapters take you to a fortress as well as a fourth island, so the pacing felt better with each chapter occuring in a new place. LeChuck was a decent antagonist as a ghost, but here, being a green skinned zombie he was even better. In both the original and remake, his character model is fantastic, the same can be said for Largo LeGrande. There are many returning characters from the first game, but they join a large cast of fun new characters.
I always thought the story was something special, and it is still as good as it ever was. It culminates in a really strange and almost creepy final chapter that gives a lot of twists and revelations, ending on an iconic brazen finish, in my opinion one of the best video game endings of all time. The game is full of puzzles, but I spent months working it all out back in the nineties, so I knew what objects I needed to get. This does fall into the nineties pitfall of including some silly solutions that wouldn't even occur to you to try. The one that stumped me the longest back when I first played this was being able to add a living dog to your inventory, something that didn't occur to me to try to pick up. Thankfully having completed this game so many times, here, I was just able to enjoy the story without having to worry about getting stuck on puzzles.
Re-playing Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge made me realise how much this holds up even today. Both the original and the re-make graphics are charming and full of life, the music is perfect, and the voice work is spot on. This is not only one of the best point and click games of all time, but one of the greatest video games ever made, a masterpiece.
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