The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

Hi, I am Jade Threepwood, and I'm a mighty pirate! 

My first videogame review will be of one of my favourite games: Monkey Island! I already wrote a review of 'Tales of Monkey Island' on our old blog once, which you can read HERE. But this time I'll be talking about the very first Monkey Island ever made. Well, sort of. They made a special edition of the original game in 2009. My dad used to play Monkey Island way back before my wonderful existance, and my sister and I have always loved playing the games too. I only just started playing The Secret of Monkey Island again (which I have played several times already), but this is the first time I'm playing the special edition version. 

I'm not going to review the original Monkey Island game because there is just no point. It is perfect as it is, and I have nothing else to say about it. However! If any of you who are reading this haven't played the game yet, you should! And what I will do now is convince you to play it.

■ The game is awesome, clearly, as I like it, and I am awesome, and therefore so is the game.

■ If you're a hardcore gamer, you HAVE to have played this game or you should be very ashamed of yourself. If you're not a hardcore gamer, no worries. Admit it, we all love playing candy crush on our cellphones or tiny death star on our ipads. Monkey Island is available for tablets etc and is very easy to play. Also you can't die. There is only one part where you can drown, but you hardly have to do anything and your main character, Guybrush, can hold his breath for 10 minutes (seriously).

■ It is the funniest game ever made. 

■ The characters are really good. They have great personalities and are very detailed. Guybrush, for instance, has an incredible fear of porcelain. See? Stuff like that.

■ It's a really cool 'retro' game because it's really old and pixellated, but if you find it too old-looking you can always switch to the special edition version which is quite modern. 

Okay I could keep going, but since the first argument should have sufficed I'm going to continue my post now.

So! Special edition! What to like and what not to like:

▲ If you are even but the slightest bit interested in art this is a very interesting game to look at. You can switch between the original version and the special edition with just a single click (or even cooler on ipads etc: with a swipe!). You can really compare the way each character and background was made.

▲ The original version has no voices, and this one does! This is a very big plus! I love Dominic Armato as Guybrush, and hearing Guybrush talk really makes the game more vivid and fun. Let's face it, we've all been waiting a very long time to actually hear Guybrush say the insults out loud. By the way, when you don't know the answer to an insult and answer something that makes no sense, Guybrush sounds really insecure! I thought that was a fun extra. : )

▼ Even though it's a lot of fun to switch from old to new, I don't really like the way they've drawn the characters. The surroundings are pretty, but the characters are a little too 'cartoon' looking for me. In the original version you got close ups sometimes and in those scenes you could really see what the characters looked like. In the special edition they don't look very human. Instead they are very cartoony. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because there are people who love the style, so this is just my opinion!

▼ If you switch to the original version you also lose the voices. That's too bad because I would love to play the original version WITH the voices. In the special edition of the second Monkey Island (LeChuck's Revenge) you can actually keep the voices in the original version, which I think is better. 

Okay, so here are some comparison pictures I made, have a look: 

There, that was my first review! Don't you just love all those ■ ▲ ▼ I used? This post looks like a space ship from Star Trek or something. To finish it off nice and fine, here is Stan:

Now go play.

✎ Jade