![]() On top of that, the control system and I didn’t always see eye to eye. ![]() After trying just about everything I could think of at the time, I asked for a hint, and received “You need to open that hatch.” Bemused, I asked for another one, and got the even more helpful “You need to go get the key.” ARRRGH! The game does include a hint system, but it’s pretty hit or miss – at one point I was on a ship with a locked hatch on one end, and a key I couldn’t reach on the other. What that means is that like any other adventure game, there’s a requisite amount of time that requires you to wander around having no damned idea of what to do next, and exhausting every single possibility you can think of still gets you nowhere. When I mentioned earlier that the gameplay was standard adventure game fare, I meant it. However, that unfortunately does not describe the whole game. Humor permeates every inch of this game -there are some truly terrible, groan-inducing puns for puzzle answers, the main character’s (the unforgettably named Guybrush Threepwood) observations on the world he finds himself in are pithy and amusing, and the “insult swordfighting” I’d heard so much about was as good as advertised. There’s nothing particularly new or revolutionary gameplay-wise, even by 1990 standards, but the reason why this game became such a cult hit over the years is its clever writing. The gameplay is standard adventure game fare – talk to NPCs to receive quests, pick up items to solve the puzzles in said quests, rinse, repeat. ![]() Menus with your inventory and the full “verb map” used by the SCUMM engine are mapped to the left and right triggers, and the verb map can also be accessed by pressing specific directions on the d-pad, like the hotkey system from Oblivion and Fallout 3. The cursor, which is moved around with the analog stick, contextually shows whatever automatic action will be done by pressing the A button, while the B button is also contextually mapped to a probable secondary action which often comes in very handy. The controls make the transition from mouse to controller mostly intact, and are very intuitive. The voice acting that LucasArts added, principally using the original voice actors from the later Monkey Island games, ranges from very good to excellent, with some voices that will sound very familiar to longtime gamers and/or cartoon watchers (such as Cam Clarke and Rob Paulsen). It’s especially impressive when you hit the back button on the 360’s controller to switch the game to Classic Mode, where you can see what it originally looked like back in the 90’s in all its pixellated glory (and get a 5-point achievement! Whee!). The first thing that you notice upon starting the game is the gorgeous widescreen HD artwork. After giving the trial a quick spin, I coughed up the 800 points and started the game proper. I had managed to get into some of the adventure classics on our Macs – Myst and The Dig being the biggies – so I was eager to finally see what else I’d missed during those turbulent 90’s. Naturally, when I heard that Secret of Monkey Island – one of the legendary classics of the point-and-click adventure genre – was being remade and coming to Xbox Live Arcade, I was stoked. When I was able to tear myself away from my NES, I made do as best I could – at the very least, I could play Risk, Tetris, Sim City, and the curious game Lunatic Fringe (that was, for some reason, included in the screensaver collection After Dark).īut really, as far as home PC gaming was concerned, that was what I was stuck with – while the wide world of Windows and DOS gaming passed right by me like a highway driver zooming past a forlorn hitchhiker, his outstretched thumb obscured by a cloud of dust. As anybody with a Mac can tell you, there is one universal fact that’s as true today as it was back then – even though we never had to bother with with DOS, the endless bootup times of early Windows releases, or numerous BSoDs…they just don’t make that many games for Mac.
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