I took a lot of heat for my recent negative review of the classic Secret of Monkey Island. So, I thought I'd give the series another whirl and picked up the sequel. I had a better time playing this second game, though my likes and dislikes are pretty much unchanged this time around.

Monkey Island 2 was, for me, a good news/bad news title, just like its predecessor. It tells the continuing adventures of our young pirate hero, Guybrush Threepwood, and his undead nemesis, the ghost pirate LeChuck. I played the spruced-up "Monkey Island Madness" collection version of the game.

Let's talk about the good. First of all, it uses the legendary LucasArts SCUMM engine, a model of DOS adventure game ease and efficiency. Interacting with the world requires you to build simple sentences ("use slime on piece of paper") chosen from a group of verbs, your inventory, and active items in the window. It's a snap to master, and it works beautifully.

Next, there's the equally legendary LucasArts humor. And this game has enough to fill Davey Jones' locker. I've rarely chuckled this much while playing a game. I particularly enjoyed the fun the designers had with the cinematic conventions of the story. Here's a good example: Guybrush is piecing together a treasure map. Every time he finds one of its four pieces, you see a cutscene at LeChuck's stronghold. The first time this happens there's a portentous title on the screen that says something like, "Deep in the Bowels of the Evil Pirate LeChuck's Lair" or some such nonsense. The third time this happens, the designers acknowledge the repetitive nature of this device with a title card that says something like "Deep in the Bowels of the Evil Blah Blah Blah." Chuckle. Finally, when the fourth piece is found, the title card for the cutscene simply says "YAWN." I laughed out loud.

This rich vein of humor continues throughout, and it's not only delightful, it's better than the first game.

An early game (1991), there are no voices at all, only subtitles. However, on the spruced-up CD version there's also truly excellent music, just as there was for the first game.

Also, the game is of very generous length, with lots of amusing adventures to fill many hours for those adventure stalwarts who refuse to look at hints or walkthroughs.

Which gets us to the Bad section of the review. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm such a first-person gamer that my mind doesn't work properly in a challenging third-person game. But I found the solutions to many of the puzzles in Monkey Island 2 to be obtuse to the point of ridiculousness. Would it occur to you when you need a wrench to find a monkey and turn him into a "monkey wrench"? Okay, maybe you're smarter than me and you'd make that leap, but I'd like to meet the players who figured out the following solution to the monkey problem: "Use banana on metronome."

It's the kind of solution that makes me throw my hands up and wonder why I even try resisting peeks at the walkthrough. These kind of solutions fill the game. Get LeChuck's beard caught in the elevator door. Huh? Grab LeChuck's underwear while he looks at a penny on the floor. What?

The game also has a fairly notorious shaggy dog ending. Perhaps my reaction to it shouldn't count, since I was expecting something sneaky, but it didn't bother me as much as I've heard it did many other players.

If the puzzles were more logical, I'd rate this game very highly indeed. But alas, puzzles are at the heart of any adventure game, and the opaque nature of the puzzles in Monkey Island 2 really kept me from enjoying the game as much as I wanted to. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal, and I do look forward to trying the third game in the series, The Curse of Monkey Island.

Final Grade: B-

If you liked Monkey Island 2:
Watch: Blackbeard's Ghost
Read: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Play: Redjack

System Requirements:

Macintosh:
O/S version 6.0.7 or higher
16 MHz 68020 or higher
2 MB RAM
256-color, 13" or larger display

This review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link back to Just Adventure.