LucasArts What's Your Favourite Monkey Island Game?

[Falksi]

As the title says, What's Your Favourite Monkey Island Game?

Any why?

 

[Maxie]

The first one is the tightest with next to no bullshit. Just puzzles and witticisms, and all the charm the series has managed to completely lose by the time Telltale necro'd it in an ugly and cringeworthy fashion

 

[ghostdog]

All around MI2 is probably the best, but my favourite will always be the first one. Nothing beats that first experience.

Curse is a cool game. Escape was kinda painful to finish. Tales, I just couldn't stomach.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Curse.

The first one I always found boring, and the second I played only just last year for the first time, and I thought it was absolutely obnoxious with some of the lunar puzzle logic and the incessant running back-and-forth between all the stupid islands just to take something from location A to B in order to advance.

Escape I must have played for five minutes tops. Tales was bleh.

 

[Tacgnol]

I never understood why Curse is so controversial. I know Ron Gilbert didn't work on it, but I always thought it was a decent game.

Certainly better than what came after.

 

[AdamReith]

1. Monkey Island 1

+ Well realised setting. A lot of it had a Lure of the Temptress vibe where an actor would leave one location and then return.
+ Great great constructed humour. Classic "main character not visible and doing crazy stuff" joke as an example.
+ Excellent dark art. Never felt like a "comedy" game.
+ Insult sword fighting.
+ One of the best, most satisfying endings of all time. Which came with a rule that all of us should follow today.

2. Monkey Island 2

+ Excellent hard as balls puzzles.
- Everything else kind of a step down from the first, terrible ending.

3. Monkey Island 3

+ Some of the best voice acting in a game. Music, graphics, very enjoyable and fun.
+ Pirate ship mini game was great. Just a pity the second act it lead into was so weak.
+ The first one I played so this list is not tainted by nostalgia.
- Puzzles and story step down from 2.

4. Monkey Island 4

- Garbage.

5. Tales of Monkey Island

- Reheated garbage with somehow worse controls.

 

[visions]

Some spoilers but probably no one reading this thread will mind, I'm not gonna bother with tags.

Thread asks for personal favorite so I voted for The Curse of Monkey Island.

The puzzles in the first game are too simple compared to the puzzles in Lechuck's Revenge and Curse of Monkey Island.

As for LeChuck's Revenge, I kinda ruined some of the experience since I played the Special Edition (with original graphics of course) and used the built in hint system a little too much. Also stuff like the monkey wrench, not being a native English speaker, I never would have figured that out on my own (though you can stumble on it by trying everything on everything but that's hardly praiseworthy). I really liked some of the puzzles though (the ending puzzle and the spitting contest come to mind). Also Guybrush is a little too much of an asshole in MI2. Nailing Stan into the coffin and stealing Wally's monocle is pretty contrasting compared to the kind of innocent doofus he is in the first game.

Curse of Monkey Island I solved without any hints/walkthroughs. Though it's less complicated than MI2, it still has some quite elaborate puzzles so that felt good. Also it has some of the coolest and funniest moments of these games imo (pirate song, banjo duel, faking your death twice, El Pollo Diablo, the monkey pirate ship).

Also I really like the cartoon graphics and the soundtrack of Curse. Then again all of the 3 first MI games look good and 2 and 3 both have great soundtracks.

I played the demo of Escape around 20 years ago and never played Tales, neither of these seems particularly interesting now. But the first 3 games are all great. No childhood nostalgia here, I played them only a few years ago out of historic interest, wasn't expecting to like them that much.

 

[WallaceChambers]

SoMI is my favorite, it's really funny, the puzzles are creative and extremely well balanced, super likable cast w/ a lot of memorable moments for all of the characters.

LeChuck's Revenge is really good but it's got a few too many bullshit puzzles for my taste and the downsampled paintings look worse than the VGA art from MI1 imo. Still, it's funny and has really awesome music.

Curse is awesome, love the style of animation MegaMonkey mode is exceptionally balanced. Great voice acting and a fun plot. It drops the meta of MI1 & 2 but tbh that aspect isn't that big of a deal to me. My one big issue with it is that it recycles a lot of ideas from MI1.

Escape is a struggle to get through for me. I liked some of the character moments but overall I dropped it out of boredom.

Tales is great, aside from some of the limitations TTG had to work with release the game as WiiWare (recycled models, etc) its a really fun game. Great puzzles and a lot of legitimately hilarious moments. It does get too fan-servicey at times and parts of the interface are oddly clunky but overall a really fun time.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Honestly surprised that MI2 is doing so poorly. I would probably rank it the best of all the LA adventures besides DotT.

 

[Falksi]

Honestly surprised that MI2 is doing so poorly. I would probably rank it the best of all the LA adventures besides DotT.

I'm planning on returning to these soon (first 3 at least) to see what I think of them now, but as it stands I too would have Curse>SOMI>MI2 in that order. The ending totally ruined MI2 for me, and it felt way messier puzzle-wise.

Curse's Mega Monkey mode seemed to hit a perfect sweet spot of taxing, but not choresome. Whereas some of MI2's puzzle were just hard work & a faff to go through.

 

[Maxie]

It's hard to deny that Curse suffered from inventory clutter in Chapters 2 and 4, as well as lost its pacing completely by the time you reached the finale

 

[Falksi]

It's hard to deny that Curse suffered from inventory clutter in Chapters 2 and 4, as well as lost its pacing completely by the time you reached the finale

Dinky Dawg (?) was definitely the stand out low point of the game for me. A character who I just wanted to punch in the bollocks, and had none of the charm the likes of Murray or Stan etc. did.

But out of all the 3 entries, Murray remains my fave of the support cast. The intro to Curse is just fucking genius.

 

[Maxie]

It's hard to deny that Curse suffered from inventory clutter in Chapters 2 and 4, as well as lost its pacing completely by the time you reached the finale

Dinky Dawg (?) was definitely the stand out low point of the game for me. A character who I just wanted to punch in the bollocks, and had none of the charm the likes of Murray or Stan etc. did.

But out of all the 3 entries, Murray remains my fave of the support cast. The intro to Curse is just fucking genius.

I'd argue that Curse is the first game to have a big intro sequence, with very few puzzles you go through at a rapid-fire pace in a very cinematic manner. Secret just has you pursue the Three Trials right away, meanwhile the sequel has you overcome the Largo embargo in an even more open-ended way than the Trials. Curse's formula kinda became a genre staple during the renaissance

 

[MRY]

MI2 has the best-constructed section of a P&C adventure game ever (Scabb Island), the best P&C adventure game puzzle of all time (the spitting-contest puzzle), and the best "boss battle" sequence of any adventure game (making the voodoo doll at the end). It also has a slew of iconic scenes that were perfectly realized, such as the torture scene. I also think it has some parts with very clever mechanics, such as the library card catalogue. However, as Darth Roxor it has outrageous ping-pong backtracking, which the developers admit they added solely to pad out the game, some really bad puzzles (like the "monkey wrench" pun), and a terrible, terrible ending. On balance, it's still probably my favorite.

 

[Alpan]

I like all of the original three games, but enjoy the well-rounded puzzling of Curse the most. I also enjoy the general brightness and theming of that game, and feel it's the most representative of the series as a whole. I guess that's rather unusual as both Secret and LeChuck's start at night time, but I have always regarded the first game especially as a lonely experience.

 

[AdamReith]

I like all of the original three games, but enjoy the well-rounded puzzling of Curse the most. I also enjoy the general brightness and theming of the that game, and feel it's the most representative of the series as a whole. I guess that's rather unusual as both Secret and LeChuck's start at night time, but I have always regarded the first game especially as a lonely experience.

Yeah, the first one really nailed the feeling of just being some nobody going around robbing graves, nailing people into coffins and just generally being a menace to society in order to achieve goals that would be beyond you otherwise.

2 and 3 definitely had a much more friendly friendly atmosphere where the games were more about Guybrush being clever rather than aggressively anti-social.

For me that's another point for 1.

 

[oldbonebrown]

The Curse of Monkey Island

is at the very tippy top of nice artstyles in games!

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I haven't played the other two (anything after Escape doesn't exist) but I feel confident that neither Secret nor Escape are my favorite. Secret is...overrated and isn't really funny. It has its moments, but I never felt the hype. Escape is funny in places and a good game for the decline years, but that Monkey Kombat mini-game is bullshit and the final boss is double bullshit.

 

[MRY]

Curse is substantially more dialogue heavy than the other games; it was very noticeable when playing with my kids. I view that as a negative.

 

[WallaceChambers]

I hated that boss battle at the end of MI2, it's basically my go to example of an obnoxious adventure game ending sequence. Trying to figure out those puzzles while getting randomly zapped around by LeChuck when you're right at the home stretch was such a bad time.

 

[Manny]

I think the first two monkeys are the best in the entire series, so it is difficult for me to choose between one of the two. But, having to do it, I stay with Secret. Curse is an excellent game… only if the first two didn't exist. Unlike Monkey 2, which seeks to be quite different from the first, in Curse there is already a certain recycling in relation to the previous two; again, for example, the insults appear, the recruitment of a group of people, the final fight with Lechuck, etc. Despite that, I think it's pretty good. This will take on parody level in Escape, which makes it, along with the graphics, the lowest of Lucas's monkeys, even though, from what I remember, the puzzle design is good, with one puzzle at least memorable: that of the Mystes O'Tyme Marshe. I hardly remember Tales of Monkey Island.

 

[GarrisonFjord]

Curse is an excellent game… only if the first two didn't exist.

I have a similar impression:
in that people who played them in sequence, may not prefer Curse,
whereas people who played Curse first (like me), prefer Curse.

 

[AdamReith]

Curse is the best Daedalic adventure game ever made.

 

[Neuromancer]

I hated that boss battle at the end of MI2, it's basically my go to example of an obnoxious adventure game ending sequence. Trying to figure out those puzzles while getting randomly zapped around by LeChuck when you're right at the home stretch was such a bad time.

I completely agree!

The puzzle itself was fine.
But the random appearance and teleportation of LeChuck made this whole thing a really annoying task.

I just recently replayed the game and the ending sequence was as bad as I remembered it. At one time, when I knew excaclty what I had to do, I needed several minutes to get into one specific room, just because I got zapped away several times.

 

[jfrisby]

I love the ending of MI2, it's one of the most memorable endings ever - and better still for never being properly resolved by Ron. There's only 2 MI games.