After replaying the first 2 games via the Enhanced Editions, I found the gameplay to be not as good as I remember. However, many people, myself included, stated that Curse Of Monkey Island is their favourite in the series, and it seems to hold up incredibly well.
In some way, you can say it’s strange that people think this is the best in the series, whilst holding the likes of series creator Ron Gilbert, and Tim Schaefer as point-and-click legends, because this was created without them.
Ron Gilbert wanted to go down the imagination route with the ending of Monkey Island 2, with Guybrush and his brother just pretending to be pirates in a theme park. However, when his brother turns to the camera and his face flashes with voodoo magic and then it cuts back to Elaine wondering where Guybrush was; it actually leaves the ending ambiguous. This new team has decided that LeChuck has built a theme park called The Carnival Of The Damned on Monkey Island, and can be accessed via a tunnel from Dinky Island. One rollercoaster has a lava pit which creates new undead soldiers for his army.
Guybrush is seen floating in a bumper car as he reaches Plunder Island. In a massive coincidence, LeChuck is firing cannons at a fort where Elaine is. After being held captive on LeChuck’s ship, Guybrush escapes alongside a ring from his treasure hold. He proposes to Elaine, but the ring is cursed and turns her to gold. You then try to lift the curse.
Instead of pixel graphics, they have gone for a cartoon look which looks great and brings out the game’s humour because they can be even more exaggerated in this style.
Guybrush’s model is a bit weird because he is very tall and blonde which contrasts with his general design in the older games, but I suppose were mainly limited in pixels, but you did see what he should look like in the close-ups in the first game so they did have a good reference if they wanted to stick with it.
Along with the new graphical style, they have got voice actors and they were a good choice and stuck with them in future games. There’s lots of dialogue which I guess you could say gives it a slow start but much of it is optional. Guybrish seems forgetful, but it seems to be for the purpose of pleasing new players to introduce existing characters again.
There’s two difficulty modes where the normal mode basically just removes some of the steps to complete the puzzles.
The interface is really effective. The old games had a large verb list where many were barely used. Now they have been streamlined into 3 actions. You click and hold to bring up the pirate coin which has hand, eye, and mouth icons. The expected actions are pickup/interact, examine, and talk. However, there are more actions in certain contexts, like using the hand on a person may shove them, whereas the mouth icon on an object can bite the lid off a bottle.
There’s some stupid puzzles and some easy to miss objects. The main annoyance for me is when the chicken shop owner stops you leaving with his gold tooth. So you inhale helium, chew some chewing gum with his tooth placed in, and the bubble floats out of the window due the helium. You hear a distant pop, so it could be anywhere. Then you have to pan the nearby mud puddle to retrieve it. It's a bit of a stretch of logic, and sometimes you have to expect the physics or people’s awareness could be exaggerated for a joke. The first two games did have cartoonish slapstick moments, and this definitely takes it further, with a few fourth wall breaks too.
There’s inspiration and nods to previous games with main objectives like finding a map, ship and crew for your adventure. The insult sword fighting mechanic returns from the first game. It’s a funny idea, but does get a bit repetitive as you basically have to lose many battles in order to learn new insults and the appropriate responses; and only then can you win once you have built up your vocabulary. To initiate these battles, there is a naval battle minigame where you have to steer your ship and fire cannons. After hitting your enemy enough times you then proceed to the sword fight. Once you have completed a ship battle, but lose the sword fight, you can just re-initiate the sword fight without going through the ship battle again.
The ending is also in the same style of previous games, so you need to pick up a few items from the rooms, and use them to defeat LeChuck, all while being constantly interrupted by LeChuck. It is a bit frustrating and feels a bit rushed.
It will take around 7.5 hours if you don’t get stuck too much. With great humour, characters, and good length for this genre, it’s a great game with a few frustrating sections.