LeChuck's Back! (The Secret Of Monkey Island 2 (PC))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	The Secret Of Monkey Island 2 (PC)
Date:	29/07/01 (24 review reads)
Rating:

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The Secret of Monkey Island was, and still remains one of the best adventure games ever to hit the PC. Its getting on a bit in years now, but where the graphics and sound may look a little dated by today's standards, the gameplay is still way up there with the best.

In the original Monkey Island you played a wannabee pirate called Guybrush Threepwood who had to perform a numer of tasks to achieve your goal. Along the way you defeated the pirate LeChuck and ended up with a rather large amount of booty - but not the fame you expected because nobody believes you! Well, here you sit with your money at the start of the game until you are mugged and left penniless - worse still you find out that LeChuck is back and without either fame or fortune you are once again on your own against him...

LeChuck's Revenge is a point and click graphic adventure in the traditional style. It looks very much like the original with maybe a slight graphic enhancement but not much - but fails to surpass its genius, although only just. As a serious adventure game, with a serious plot and lots of serious puzzles this simply wouldn't work too well and no doubt would have suffered greatly at the hands of time...but fortunately the Monkey Island series is far from serious. In fact, they are packed with jokes and pure bizarreness that will keep you smiling throughout and often make you laugh out loud, no doubt worrying your family as much as I did mine...

The puzzles are not exactly obvious, but as is the nature of this type of game are pretty easy to work out in the end. After all, when you only have a few objecs in your possession and a few places to use them, then even if you haven't a clue what is going on then you will manange to work your way past that part by sheer trial and error. Object manipulation is achieved through the two main game areas. The top(much larger) screen is where all the action takes place and the bottom has a list of commands wh
ich you can click on to allow manipulation in the upper screen - simple to get the hang of and easy to use. Sometimes the difficulty is with recognising what an object is on screen because of the rather clumpy old graphics but hovering the mouse over it gives you a description. It is hard to criticise a game of this age over its graphics or its sound for that matter as if it were produced to day it would be slammed - but for its time it was rather good - suffice to say, don't come in with your hopes set too high. That said, I rather like the dumb pirate music which plays throught...

A couple of gripes? Well no, other than maybe a rather disappointing ending, but I don't suppose that really matters too much. The puzzles are harder than the original's and certainly a challenge for even a seasoned adventurer and its overall humour is enough to gain a good recommendation from me at least. Definitely one of the classic games of the genre and certainly one which come highly recommended and not just from me, but from everyone who has ever played it as far as I can tell...go find a copy, you can probaby still get the Monkey Island box set as well which has all the Monkey Island games on it - well worth it believe me.

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