Looking for Monkeys

Ok. So that hustle from work is finished, thank god...

In the aftermath I've been reclaiming a bit of my life (the little I use) and, among other things, playing Monkey Island.

For those of you that don't know, a new Monkey Island game has been released recently (the day of my birthday no less!), or rather, the first chapter of said game.

The game has been produced by Telltalle Games, a little company founded by disenchanted Lucasarts employees, who already resurrected Sam & Max a couple of years ago.

Also, a new "remake" of the original Monkey Island, has been produced by Lucasarts, you can get it from Steam, for the cheap, though still unreasonable, price of 9 EUR (unreasonable because of dollar to euro parity).

As a person and a gamer who grew up with Lucas adventure games, I can only say that I'm pretty much thrilled by this turn of events, I always had the hope of seeing the "good old times" come back in the future, but it's one of those things you *want* to believe, not actually believe without doubt.

While the new game has a setting island that's not really as charming or interesting as the previous games ones (Monkey Island 4 not withstanding), as a game, it's undoubtedly a Monkey Island game, our beloved idiot genious Guybrush Threepwood (boy, I can't belive I can write that name without errors on my first try) is given life by his original voice actor from "Curse", and the puzzles from the game all use that "rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-in-the-middle" logic that we know and love.

The remake on the other hand, is kinda of a mixed bag. For one part, it's awesome to "hear" the voices of all the characters in the game, finally. But on the other hand, the look of the game is weird as hell...

Instead of rebuilding the whole game from scratch, the Lucas crew decided to build the remake "over" the old game, repainting scenery, sprites and characters and redoing the inventory and verb system.

The problem is that the animation in the game is really old and stiff, and while in the old graphics this doesn't really show, in the new ones it kinda sticks out like a sore thumb.

The most awesome thing, is that you can change between the old version and the new one, with the hit of a key (F10 in the PC case). I miss some options, for example, having the voice overs in the old version, rather than the "all or nothing" aproach it takes... but on the whole, I recommend it.

I'll try to put my head in order for the next post, so It's less rambling.