Curse of Monkey Island
Well, I guess anyone with an adventure game interest, not that it seems to be too many people anymore, have already made their way through this game. But I'll just ignore that for a while and assume I'm writing about a game no-one has played ...
The story picks up as good as it can after the somewhat odd end of LeChuck's Revenge, with Guybrush Treepwood lost at sea. As he writes in his log about the graveness of his situation and how he'll be done for soon, he floats straight into a battle between LeChuck and Elaine and is captured by LeChuck. Escaping from his undead clutches, Guybrush gets hold of a huge diamond ring, which he uses right away to propose to Elaine. Too bad that voodoo curse was on the ring ... Elaine turns into a gold statue and someone has to find a way to break the curse and deal with a certain undead pirate once again. It's not easy being a hero, not even one who scores excessively high on standardized tests ...
So, how good is it? It's a Monkey Island, a LucasArts adventure for crying out loud, can it possibly fail? No, it probably can't, not on the large scale anyway ... Didn't like the final sequences though, LeChuck's revenge did it better and it wasn't too much fun even then. And knowing Ron Gilbert would have done the end differently probably didn't help either ... In general, it feels like the game exploits being a sequel a bit too much. We've seen the swordfighting before, even if it's still nice, just like the final sequence. And finding map, ship and crew seemed a bit familiar too ...
Otherwise, I think the problems are just fine. Perhaps not strictly logical, but they make sense if you get on the right angle with reality, just as aventure puzzles should be, and are thus completely solvable once you get into the style. They may even be a bit easy. I got seriously stuck , to the point of trying every object on every other object, once at the end of disc one, but when I solved that puzzle I completed the rest of the game in one day (and then I even had to replay a bit since it crashed on me once when I hadn't saved for a while). So, it may be a bit short or a bit easy, but I take that any day before too long and excessivly difficult.
The characters are a nice bunch as always, and the dialogues can be hilarious. Just ask van Helgen for pirate stories, or Haggis about hise name. And those are just two conversations in the same room ... Seeing old characters again are nice of course, and Murray is a nice new addition too, muahahahaha ...
So, to tie things up, Curse of Monkey Island is a really good adventure game, just like you'd expect from LucasArts. Still, I think the two first games were a tad or two better (mind you, it could be just another case of nostalgia). In all, it was a really nice ride while it lasted, but why couldn't we have the main theme during the credits?
