I Found Out the Secret to Monkey Island

The secret to Monkey Island? TEDIUM

Story 7/10: The story is pretty weak, the climax is weaker, and the ending is crap. In defense of SMI (Secret of Monkey Island), it was written and created in 1990.

"The game was originally released on floppy disk in 1990 for Atari ST, Macintosh and PC systems (using EGA graphics)." (Thanks Wikipedia!)

Maybe people expected a lot less back then? Also I guess a floppy could hold like, 10 lines of a word document and then it was full. Doesn't leave a lot of space for the storyline. And I respect their desire to maintain the integrity of the game rather than pump it full of the awesomeness we know now. Like character development.

Graphics 9/10: The graphics functions made this game really fun. You can switch back and forth between the old school 8-bit and the funky fresh restyled graphics. I love that they maintained the original feel of playing a platform game though, even with the 3d look of the new graphics. Although I never played the original SMI, I feel like they maintained the original feel/concept.

Sound 8/10: This music isn't going to win any awards, but I get the feeling it was only slightly retouched from the original and then moved into the new game. Although I fully expected it to, it did not annoy me! Apparently I love island tunes more than I knew. Also I really enjoyed the voice acting in this game. The main character sounds like a total tool, and he's supposed to. My only problem? No option that I could find for captions and sometimes it was really hard to hear/understand. Well, there is always the option to go into the 8-bit graphics which don't have the voice over and they have captioned speaking, but ... well ... I guess I just like the new graphics.

Gameplay 6/10: Remember that time I said that it was so tedious? I am going to repeat that a few times so you know how I felt over the last 5 1/2 hours. TEDIOUS TEDIOUS TEDIOUS. I was pretty excited to play a 'mystery' style game...but man. Going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth (getting the tedium yet??) got SO ANNOYING. Mostly because Guybrush Threewood (the main character) moves achingly slow. Also, and this might just be me, but I had SUCH a hard time figuring out what to do. Sometimes the connections in this game just were not clicking for me. I would have all these items in my inventory and be wondering, "What next?" Then give in and use a hint and it would be like "Go talk to that dude over there and give him something" and I'd wonder, "Who the hell would've ever guessed to do that?!?" This is definitely the kind of game I do not have the patience for, but my husband would excel at. (He has no problem spending hours in a game searching every nook and cranny. See: YEARS spent playing Fallout 3.)

Overall 6/10: This isn't really that fun. I mean, I played it through...but I'm not looking forward to going back and playing it again to get the last 75 achievement points I am missing. Maybe it would mean more to you if you spent hours of your precious 1990 childhood chilling on your old Apple figuring out why Guybrush was such a man-gina...but for me? Not the most thrilling. In fact, I'm a little irritated at GameInformer for making it sound so cool.

Buy/Rent: If you could, this is definitely a renter. I finished it in about 5 1/2 hours. But since it's Xbox Live Arcade, you have to buy if you want to fly. Really when you think about it, it's only about $10 for a lot of hours of entertainment. More than you get for $10 at a movie. Or eating McDonald's one and a half times. I don't know...if you like adventure/mystery games, and you're totally bored some weekend, and have 800 Xbox points just lying around...go for it. Don't say I didn't warn you.