Pretty damn unimpressive for what it's supposed to represent.
The overall quest design is fine, I guess, but the puzzles are incredibly boring and straightforward. Very few instances of funny solutions or even just bog-standard adventure game lateral thinking. Everything is pretty much just solved like you think it should be upon first glance! Dull as dishwater stuff.
Also nowhere near as funny as it should be, given the pedigree. Feels weirdly like nobody's heart is really in it, in the writing and ESPECIALLY the voice acting, which, not to insult anybody because I don't know who is doing it (besides a very recognizable Garry "Optimus Primal" Chalk (who is great)) but they're all pretty bad and it sounds like there at least a couple true amateurs mixed in, which ... okay. Anyway, I think Gilbert's particular writing style doesn't work very well when voiced in the first place, but to pull it off you definitely need the right vibe, and they aren't giving it.
Topping it all off is one of the laziest, most uninspired and most pointless endings I can remember in a narrative game. And for the record, I have always loved the ending of MONKEY ISLAND 2, so -that- is not the problem here. But it seems like Gilbert set out to justify all the pissing and moaning people did over that game and deliver exactly the ending they complained about back then. And not in some kind of funny, meta way. It just sucks!
Genuinely suprised by how weak this is, and now extremely trepidatious about starting the copy of RETURN TO MONKEY ISLAND I have sitting on the shelf here.
The overall quest design is fine, I guess, but the puzzles are incredibly boring and straightforward. Very few instances of funny solutions or even just bog-standard adventure game lateral thinking. Everything is pretty much just solved like you think it should be upon first glance! Dull as dishwater stuff.
Also nowhere near as funny as it should be, given the pedigree. Feels weirdly like nobody's heart is really in it, in the writing and ESPECIALLY the voice acting, which, not to insult anybody because I don't know who is doing it (besides a very recognizable Garry "Optimus Primal" Chalk (who is great)) but they're all pretty bad and it sounds like there at least a couple true amateurs mixed in, which ... okay. Anyway, I think Gilbert's particular writing style doesn't work very well when voiced in the first place, but to pull it off you definitely need the right vibe, and they aren't giving it.
Topping it all off is one of the laziest, most uninspired and most pointless endings I can remember in a narrative game. And for the record, I have always loved the ending of MONKEY ISLAND 2, so -that- is not the problem here. But it seems like Gilbert set out to justify all the pissing and moaning people did over that game and deliver exactly the ending they complained about back then. And not in some kind of funny, meta way. It just sucks!
Genuinely suprised by how weak this is, and now extremely trepidatious about starting the copy of RETURN TO MONKEY ISLAND I have sitting on the shelf here.
2 Comments
sighhhhh
Acquiescence
8 months ago
If you have issues with the ending (and oh boy I sure did) then uhhhhhh... good luck with Return to Monkey Island is all I'll say!