Reader reviews for Return to Monkey Island

Ron Gilbert created one of the best adventure game series of all time with the help of Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer, and 30 years later, he faced the challenging task of creating another game in the canon, despite not being involved with the three games that followed Monkey Island 2.

Was it a success?

Let’s start with the graphics. It’s not what I hoped for, but it hasn’t been since Monkey Island 3. It feels too new-agey, edgy, and, on occasions, cheap. Still, it has a distinctive paper doll or children’s drawing, highly stylized look, and it’s far from being bad. When the game was announced, I criticized the art direction, but after finishing the game, I cannot criticize it because it’s very unique. When you think about it, every MI game (apart from the first two games) had its own unique and different graphics style. Furthermore, it even resembles the canceled infamous MI movie style, with sharp edges and a hint of cubism.

However, what I CAN criticize is that they haven’t reached the full potential of the style they chose. At places, the colors are bland without too much shading or a rich palette, resembling a Flash game, and the character models could use more details and polish.

As for the voices, Armato did a fantastic job once again as the voice of Guybrush. He even sounds better to me than in the Special Editions, as he doesn’t talk so fast, and every pronunciation and joke is spot on. The rest of the crew is fine; it’s not Earl Boen for LeChuck’s voice, but the actor in place of him also sounded good. The music brings Caribbean happy vibes and a smile to your face once again, though the new themes are nothing to write home about, and it’s still old themes in new variations that will make your heart dance.

The story is told through an older Guybrush telling the story to his son about the search for the Secret of Monkey Island, similar to the search for Big Whoop in Monkey Island 2. Actually, the whole game is very, very similar to Monkey Island 2 in combination with the elements of the first game, both in terms of story and design. You start on Melee Island, “Secret” is the big word on the street just like Big Whoop was on Scabb Island, you need to obtain a ship in this way or another to reach Monkey Island, and later more twists and turns ensue as we travel between multiple islands at our own leisure. Only this time it’s Terror (similar to Blood Island with volcanic eruptions), Scurvy (green, more cheerful place), and Brrr Muda Island (touch of Norse mythology) instead of Phatt and Booty. When that happens, the game takes you to golden age times where you can visit dozens of places at once, with total freedom and increased difficulty.

Speaking of difficulty, the puzzles are mostly very good inventory fare, and I haven’t been reminded of Day of the Tentacle inventory madness like this for a long time. It’s not that you can hold a crazy amount of stuff at once, but still, you will spend plenty of time rummaging through your stuff, inspecting it again and again, and thinking about it in the context of the game world until the green light switches inside your head. Only the best games in the genre succeed at that. Even mazes are done in the original way. On top of that, “Return” has one of the best hint systems in the history of the genre, that can be compared to that of Keepsake, which feels very organic, just like a good friend of yours who already finished the game is sitting beside you and giving you a drop of hints or nudges in the right direction whenever you need it. It’s not an overly hard game, but I dare anyone to finish it without calling for hints. Some of the puzzles, especially the last one, are deviant that much that I was imagining Ron smiling at the poor souls who need to solve it. Only one time I felt I haven’t been given enough clues, which is acceptable for this sort of twisted-logic game.

The recognizable Monkey Island humor is there and seems like a mix of comedy from all previous parts. I chuckled along the way, asking myself where they’re finding inspiration for all that crazy stuff (ghost chickens and ghost chicken food on board the Ghost ship, skulls that play notes of the musical scale, island covered in limes to fight scurvy, etc.). At some points, I was in hysterical laughter and applauding the writers.

Still, the game fires blanks at a few other areas. Elaine’s character is there, and while it’s true that she’s not exactly in the spotlight compared to a new villain, Captain Madison, with more screen time, or even Carla as the new governor, she felt somehow unnatural—almost too agreeable without the right character dynamic, a strange feeling that can be only explained by the game’s controversial ending. Indeed, she does pursue her mission of battling scurvy, but it’s like she’s different compared to previous parts. The same can be said for Murray. It wasn’t easy for Ron to make the game with the vision he had after his two original games, while in the meantime, three games followed without him, and he still chose to incorporate characters and events from those games in one way or another. That earns respect, but still—Murray is criminally underused. A character that has become sort of an icon among the fans, he’s here on “autopilot,” only briefly as an item in the inventory, and 95% of the time as the ship’s ornament, never even commenting on the progress or game world, other than making funny threats to Guybrush. It feels like he’s there only to “be there,” while the Hint System is more of an “alive and context-interactive” game character than he is. As for LeChuck, only at the 5th chapter did I feel like he’s that untouchable, eponymous villain from the previous game, while the rest of the game, he felt less scary than usual. The rest of the characters are mostly hit and miss with the character development. It also feels less “piratey” compared to, say, the first and second game (though it’s not without its buccaneers merit) and mostly reminds me of “Escape” in terms of game lore.

Another problem is that some islands feel unfinished in terms of locations to visit—Scurvy and Terror, in particular, where you can only see hotspots for various places like Waterfall, Rock, without the possibility to visit them other than to get a comment when you click on them and with fewer characters to interact with compared to a rich social life on Mêlée Island.

Now, cut to the ending. It didn’t surprise me or bother me, as I can see it was the issue for many players. Actually, I would be surprised to know that it surprised anyone who already finished “Revenge.” It’s a great little philosophical aspect of the game that we adventure gamers can sit by the campfire (on Scabb Island preferably) and discuss. You have elements of perspective, passage of time, and nostalgia intertwining with each other. And life is also a big intersection of those things in many aspects. In that regard, let me quote what Ron and Dave said themselves in the Scrapbook:

“The game is a goofy pirate adventure, the same as always, but also it’s a story about trying to recapture the past, with all its alleged youthful strength and glory. Guybrush will both succeed and fail at this. He will sort of get what he wants, but it won’t be what he expected.

I predict the same for us.”

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Time Played: 10-20 hours
Difficulty: Just Right

I’m not going to describe my long agromance with Monkey Island 2, how I spent weeks and months playing it as a teen, how it influenced my tastes in games and comedy, how I adored the final which came out of nowhere, and how I wished to see Ron Gilbert’s version of Monkey Island 3 one day. The way he described his “dream sequel” in his article totally clicked with me. Yes, make it like you always wanted to, like those 30 years that have passed since were just a bad dream. Then he actually announced it, and then… denounced everything he said before.

He didn’t want a straight-up sequel to his games as a matter of fact! Guybrush lived through all the other sequels and then more, matured and turned into a maniac obsessed with finding the Secret. Yeah, just like those fans who annoyed Gilbert all those years, how postironic - only I find it rather sad than funny to play the whole game as this sort of postironic Guybrush. In fact I hated him. The naive pirate-wanna-be was turned into a pathetic bastard unable to perform the simplest of tasks without failing or ruining other lives. Intentionally.

Of course, there’s nothing noble about being a pirate, but that was the whole point: Monkey Island has always been its own thing, a hand-made world of pirate-wanna-bees who did their best to look like smelly grog-drinking cutthroats, yet couldn’t harm a fly without properly insulting it first. And it worked really well even in later sequels that respected this original vision. Gilbert decided otherwise.

Return is nasty in its narrative and humour, it disrespects the established lore, it breaks forth walls right from the beginning and leaves you with a sense of emptiness. Besides endless references to previous chapters there’s hardly any plot, and those bits we get steal greatly from Secret and the “worst in the series” as Escape is (undeservingly) known these days. In fact I replayed Escape right after finishing Return and was amazed how much smarter, wittier and “Monkey Island"er it was.

In addition to recycled events and fan service Return also tries to be a poor man’s modern-day TV cartoon. The crudely drawn characters, both old and new, act totally bonkers for no particular reason, they run, scream, make faces, they talk non-stop and crack cheap jokes you forget as soon as you heard them. Guybrush is the worst of the bunch, of course, he looks and acts like a braindead dummy who doesn’t care about anything or anyone, including himself. It’s not the Guybrush who risked his life to rescue Elaine, to kill LeChuck, to save the Caribbeans, no. He just follows some voices in his head as it seems and keeps whining about “the Secret of Monkey Island”. Really sad.

Instead of verb or coin interface we now have a smart cursor that spoils all our actions even before we click on anything. Puzzles are easy even on the “hard mode”, even with a couple of unnecessary mazes, lots of backtracking and some poorly structured tasks like this new shady locksmith business, or the fight for a new queen, or the final test… In fact there was hardly a well-thought puzzle in the whole game. Most of the time we are just running in circles searching for x number of items or performing fetch quests. So much for Ron’s adventure making philosophy.

Of course, I’m probably reading too much into Return, it’s an ok classic adventure on its own, with some fun moments and occasional splashes of intelligence. I particularly enjoyed the minutes spent on board of a ghost ship and in the company of Stan who was arguably the best recurring character. And yet, as a Monkey Island sequel, I found it uninspired, rushed and unwanted, like the team was forced to make it instead of something else. Like milking a cow. Or joining a funk band. Or writing Thimbleweed Park 2. Or the *real* real Monkey Island 3.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Easy

The visuals are good but could’ve been much better (not as inmersive as i would’ve liked).

The story is NOT a continuation from the second game; in fact, they ignore the ending of the second installment (chucky possesed and other stuff i’m not goind to mention to not spoil anything) and remake that part in a completely different way as a prologue for the game.

The game mechanics to solve puzzles (whitch are very good, by the way) are so oversimplified that playing it in hard mode was like playing a speed run (even thought the game is long).

In short: not as good as the first 3, but very good and entertaining.

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Time Played: 10-20 hours
Difficulty: Easy

I’ll start by saying that I was very sceptical of this game. After seeing the trailers and getting a good look at the new art style I was absolutely gutted. It looks so rushed and half-hearted, like a webtoon or mobile game. It was enough to put me off playing.

However, having seen all the positive reviews I decided to at least give the game a try. Granted, the visuals were as bad as I expected, lacking depth and atmosphere and when I saw Guybrush for the first time my heart sank. What an abomination!

Returning to Melee Island should have been a misty-eyed nostalgic experience, but the art style left me feeling nothing. Well, maybe a little melancholic seeing yet another fond childhood memory butchered. I guess this is the reason I oppose the art style so much.

Initially I turned off the game and decided not to proceed until my friend suggested I try downscaling the resolution and adding a CRT effect using Reshade. This was a real game changer!! I don’t know why it helped so much but it made everything so much more appealing and made it look more like a classic 90s adventure game and somewhat reminiscent of Day of the Tentacle.

I can now say that I’m very glad I decided to proceed with this game. Graphics aside, everything feels exactly like a classic Monkey Island game. The music, the writing, the puzzles and the humour is everything I hoped it would be. I laughed out loud many times and quite literally spat my drink out at one point.

My biggest regret is that I started playing this game with the mind of a critic, but when I eventually accepted it for what it was and let go of my judgements I became deeply immersed and ended up loving every bit of it.

I expected the puzzles to be dumbed down (as many things are these days) but they too were faithful to the original games, reasonably challenging without being frustrating. At first I resented having a hint book available, but it turned out to be very useful on a couple of occasions and so much better than browsing a walkthrough and risking spoilers.

Though I missed the original interface at first, what they’ve done here works so much better, giving us a full view of the screen and cutting out a load of verb commands that would only impede progress.

It’s always a pleasure to hear the classic MI themes, though a bit disappointing that Michael Land didn’t give us a new score for this game or at least more varied background music. That didn’t affect my enjoyment, however.

Without adding any spoilers, I will say that the game left me feeling unsatisfied and melancholic. Unlike Monkey Island 1 to 3, which I have played many times over, I doubt I will ever come back and play this game again unless they make a remastered version with graphics more in line with Monkey Island 2 (or the MI2 enhanced edition).

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Time Played: 2-5 hours
Difficulty: Just Right