It'll Drive You Bananas! (Curse of Monkey Island (PC))

Member Name: scuzz

Product:	Curse of Monkey Island (PC)
Date:	20/03/04 (110 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: excellent graphics, good gameplay

Disadvantages: very hard puzzles

I loved this game and think it's the best one of the Monkey Islad series.

Background
Once again you take on the role as Guybrush Threepwood who is still desperately in love with Elaine. Yet again, his arch enemy, LeChuck, is brought back from the dead and wants revenge on the young pirate.

You start off in LeChuck's grasp with an all too familiar face! Quite a tricky opening puzzle but you'll get there! Once you have escaped, you and Elaine will get engaged, which is when the adventure really starts - she turns into a gold statue! The voodoo lady from the last game is on hand to help you, but Elaine gets stolen and it is down to Guybrush to save her.

Your travels will see you reuinting dead lovers and joining the Good Soup family. The cannibals from the first Monkey Island make a cameo appearance but this time meat isn't their favourite food.

Gameplay
The seafaring section of the game can be a bit repeetitive and this is the only part where I flet like quitting just because after a while I found the sequnce boring. You sail the seas, fighting pirate ships in order to steal their gold and buy better cannons. You do this round about six times and then take on Rottington - who is difficult to defeat. To beat him you must aquire several sword fight insults and use your brain to pair them up with him beacuse his are differnet from the average pirate. However, once this section is complete, it's plain sailing(!) into the next section.

Once again the game is divided into parts and offers a save option. You also get to discover what Big Whoop is in this chapter of Guybrush's adventures. I won't give it away.

The game as always is very playable and you can have some fun with trying out different objects on various people. it does take a long time to complete and some of the puzzles are devilishly hard.

Graphics and Sound
For the fisrt time in the Monkey Island series the
graphics are of cartoon quality and all the characters speak with their own individual voices. The graphics really are breath taking and there's so much detail gone into each individual character and scene. There are lots of sections that you just watch as they tell you the story and anyone walking in at that point would think you were watching a film.

The voices of some characters can be a tad annoying, but the comments you can make are very funny. I don't know about anyone else, but I think that on eof the pirates sounds like Kelsey grammer from Frasier? LucasArt should be very proud of the effects in this game! It's interesting to hear voices for those characters that have been in all of the Monkey games and quite frankly a relief not to have to read dialoge all the time.

Personally, I found the music in this game a lot more tolorable than the last too game as it isn't so repetive. You can also alter the volumes of each individual aspect such as speech and music.

Who is it for?
The game is recommended for eleven year olds and upwards alough younger children maywell enjoy watching as the game developes into a sort of film. Prepare yourself for a long period of playing the game because if you're anything like me, you will become addicted and will sit and play it for hours at a time.

Summary: