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Thursday 6 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY:
Another thing I really love about the Monkey Island games is the characters. Guybrush is a great mix between a brave, witty hero and an adorable, weaselly coward. He is the hero of the series and often saves the world, but most of his items are stolen or tricked away from their original owners. There are a large amount of recurring characters as well: the mysterious and all-knowing Voodoo Lady, the sarcastic and tough Elaine, Murray the megalomaniacal talking skull, and Stan the traveling salesman. It's always fun to see recognizable characters that span multiple games.
The story of the game, if a little meandering, is quite fun. However, sometimes it's hard to remember the track of the narrative when you're caught up in retrieving item after item. Most of the game's narrative is told through the cutscenes, while the actual gameplay is more about solving puzzles and collecting things. The story in Monkey Island 2 isn't as strong as in the other games, but it's still fun enough to play out.
DESIGN:
The graphic design of the game is relatively poor by today's standards, but amazingly expressive for when it first came out. The characters are basically pixellated in front of hand drawn backgrounds. The style is slightly more realistic than the cartoony sequels, but you can tell where the series is heading. The graphics are a lot better than the prequel, and reflect the tone of the game adequately well. Helpfully, there is always a description of the item when you roll your mouse over it, so you're never confused by the graphics for long. The only major problem I had was that sometimes it was hard to see small, but crucial, items because of the fairly poor graphics.
For having come out almost 20 years ago, Monkey Island 2:LeChuck's Revenge, shows a lot of emergent complexity for its time. The player has a fair few different choices of how to reply to character statements. What you choose to say doesn't really have an effect on the narrative or gameplay, but can change the responses of the other characters. You can find out different expositional information depending on how you answer, or just get different witty lines each time you play. The emergent complexity here might be extremely limited, but it is still impressive for it's time.
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