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