New Monkey Island games

[Drooling Iguana]

Remake from LucasArts due out this summer.

New episodic series from TellTale (the guys making the new Sam and Max games) due out in July. Unfortunately, Ron Gilbert isn't writing them and they seem to be following on from Curse and Escape rather than being the proper sequel to MI2 that I've been waiting for. Still, they've got some of the other original writers on board and Gilbert has provided some input to the design team.

[The Grim Squeaker]

:8.
Excuse me, I think I need some time alone and a pack of tissues...


AWESOME!

[Lord Woodlouse]

I never ever thought the Wii would be where I would be playing the next part in the Monkey Island saga...

[tezunegari]

Finally there's light at the end of the cannon barrel.

Hopefully they'll abandon the MI4 controls and return to the glorious Point&Click .

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The inner child in me cried out for joy when I saw this.

This is fucking awesome.

[Gunhead]

I shall now dance the happy dance.

I've completed this game roughly gazillion times. I can't wait to go for gazillion and one.

-Gunhead

[Eleas]

SQUEE!

Monkey IV was a barrel of suck, but this one looks like it could put things back on track.

[Thanas]

Oh my.

Let's hope it is better than Monkey IV...

[wautd]

Hopefully they'll abandon the MI4 controls and return to the glorious Point&Click .

For that reason alone I gave up after playing less than half an hour. I wanted to like it but goddamn those controls sucked the fun right out of it.

[Drooling Iguana]

Finally there's light at the end of the cannon barrel.

Hopefully they'll abandon the MI4 controls and return to the glorious Point&Click .

I'd imagine that the new games will be using the same engine as the Sam and Max episodes, which were all point-and-click-based (although dumbed down a bit too much for my liking.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Good! This world has needed more Monkey Island for some time.

I'm tempted to pick up the Sam and Max episodes as I've seen them in stores. I keep forgetting to. Are they any good?

[Drooling Iguana]

Decent, but too easy and very repetitive (there's only one or two new areas in each episode, with the rest of the game spent going to all the same buildings with the same people over and over again but with different dialogue each time.) Considering how few adventure games are being made these days they're worth a look but they suffer a lot from the episodic format.

[chitoryu12]

Wait, they're really doing it? It's not a joke this time?

Holy crap.

[Eleas]

Honestly, what I thought was the coolest feature in the remake is probably the seamless transition between the old version and the new one. We'll see how that one will be turning out in action. It does sound a bit too awesome for it to be true.

[charlemagne]

I don't really care for a remake of part 1. It's nice that they made new drawings and did voiceovers and all, but they didn't work on the animations etc. at all judging by the "trailer" type video on the site. Might be nice as a casual thing to put on my girlfriend's Wii, depending on price, of course. But MI1 VGA-Version still looks more decent than e.g. King's Quest I - III - with KQI I really could understand the need for a remake (which was done over 10 years ago IIRC). My point being, since I love MI as much as the next guy and have been replaying it every couple of years, I can still live with the original.

But the new episodes, I hope they turn out good. MI4 sucked, but the return to some kind of point&click will do away wit 80% of the suck. (Strangely I enjoyed Grim Fandango a lot more than MI4, although it had the same stupid and confusing arrow-keys-control scheme.) I'll wait for the whole package on sale, though.

[Eleas]

But the new episodes, I hope they turn out good. MI4 sucked, but the return to some kind of point&click will do away wit 80% of the suck. (Strangely I enjoyed Grim Fandango a lot more than MI4, although it had the same stupid and confusing arrow-keys-control scheme.) I'll wait for the whole package on sale, though.

That's probably because Grim Fandango wasn't derivative shit. I mean, I got past the control scheme in fairly short order. It was still annoying, but that was it. MI4's greatest problem was that its art and story were both crap. Instead of the giddy, warm hearted merry-go-round it should have been, MI4 was just tired, derivative kitsch. As far as I got (which was quite some distance) there were no funny or memorable characters, no dialogue or puzzles that made me laugh, no graphics that didn't feel washed-out and dull, and no location that didn't feel like a bad renaissance fair.

It's kinda ironic. Guybrush's beef with the bad guy in MI4 is apparently that he's turning the Caribbean into a sanitized padded amusement park. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the game itself did to the Monkey Island franchise. The whole game felt... washed out.

[charlemagne]

The whole game felt... washed out.

My recollection of MI4 is quite fuzzy, because I played through it exactly one time... and I remember that it didn't really feel like Monkey Island. And the "end boss fight" was really stupid.

However, since MI3 I was disappointed that they did away with rugged, seasoned Guybrush of MI2 and went back to "Babyface" Guybrush for good. It would've been much cooler to keep some sense of advancement, have Guybrush get older and an actually mightier pirate with every game, until you could do a finale where Guybrush is an old, grumpy and really mighty pirate, and then do some epic story with a huge twist in the end, maybe showing how Guybrush's actions seem really EVIL looking back at them, and have him turn into some kind of "new LeChuck", because "there always has to be a LeChuck".

[Thanas]

^Eh, no.

MI3 was gold. And Guybrush being a really mighty pirate kinda defeats the point of him. He is supposed to be a wannabe pirate.

[charlemagne]

^Eh, no.

MI3 was gold. And Guybrush being a really mighty pirate kinda defeats the point of him. He is supposed to be a wannabe pirate.

Alright, yeah, that's true.

Re-reading it, I have no idea where that blurp came from, anyways I propably just miss bearded Guybrush in a mighty pirate jacket!

[Connor MacLeod]

Guybrush wsa never manly in MI2. They just tried for that effect (he looked more like a slightly mature teenage pirate.)

MI3 for me was the high point because it had variations of everything I liked (you had back the sword fighting, but with a ncie new twist, the puzzles were fun and the different difficulty settings helped a bit with replayability) and the graphics nad voice acting were highly apporpriate. And the story fitted quite well and was suitably pirately.

MI4's big problem from my POV isn't so much the story, as what they did with the elements of story they had. The game did have some good and fun points (I actually thought the Monkey combat bit was clever) and its always fun seeing Elaine and Guybrush as an actual married couple. But they didn't really use the story as well as they could have - alot of elements were too jarring (alot of the refrences, like the starbucks made the game feel too dated, for example) and some of the more overtly "modernized" stuff just felt more jarring than it needed to be (especially the monkey robot - sorry). And some of the plot lines were superfluous (LeChuck had no point there other than having LeChuck in the game - at least the way they handled it. Some sort of subplot with him would have helped more if they were determined NOT to have him come back - again.)

[Thanas]

I know this can be seen as me-tooing, but for once:
What Connor said.

[The Yosemite Bear]

woot, voodoo lady!

[DPDarkPrimus]

MI3 is the best because MURRAY THE TALKING SKULL

[Lord Woodlouse]

I still think MI2 was the best. I didn't like the overtly cartoony direction MI took. I liked that the MI world felt detailed and almost historic. It made the exceptions all the more amusing.

[Fleet Admiral JD]

I absolutely, positively, cannot wait for this game.

And if they fuck up my childhood memories. . . I will be extremely, shall we say, upset.