You won’t have to answer that question to enjoy Return to Monkey Island. The chances are you can rejoice if you’re a fan of these point-and-click adventures that started in the early nineties under the aegis of LucasArts. At least relax. Dave Grossman and Ron Gilbert are the co-writers and directors. In addition to Gilbert, Grossman, and Schafer, many consider the first two games, The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, to be the series’ high watermark.
Those new to these games will find plenty of entertainment here; the story is laced with jokes, and puzzles are rarely unsavoury. I recommend Hard mode, because it’s a fine balance between harder puzzles and the full monkey.) Most of all, you’ll get to know one of games’ best heroes. Dominic Armato voices Guybrush once again, who has done it since The Curse of Monkey Island. Among them are ambition, self-interest, a thirst for riches, a weakness for love, and an implied and impregnable sense of decency. How about a moral compass? It’s just kind of small and off to one side,” he says. It’s like a hangnail.”
They involve combining inventory items with parts of the environment, and they require lateral thinking. We’ve been lateralose-intolerant for years now, for fear that narrative flow might stall if we get stuck. Back when LucasArts ruled, abstruse puzzle design thickened narrative illusion; rather than pulling us out of the story, we carried it with us after we stopped playing. Plus, there’s nothing like figuring out a new way to solve a conundrum, only to have the game accommodate you. Its world suddenly got richer and wilder.
Return to Monkey Island might be the wildest yet. Guybrush tells the story to his son Boybrush on a bench; the whole thing has the feel of drunken regalement. The skull-faced menace from previous entries is back, and Threepwood must travel to Monkey Island to uncover the secret that’s eluded him. It’s more about the art style, by Rex Crowle. We get spiky colours, scribbled hair, and beady eyes instead of the pixelated look of the originals. Crowle’s work on Tearaway – that ode to lick-and-stick paper joys – and, most importantly, Knights and Bikes are similar.
Two little girls, beached in drizzly boredom on a Cornish caravan holiday, liked to pretend their afternoons were encrusted with Arthurian legends. Crowle brings the same scrawled brightness and his belief that make-believe can happily embrace reality to the new game. Fans might baulk at the new look, but, like Guybrush, it gets to the heart of Monkey Island. In addition to the puzzles, the script, and the music by Michael Land, Peter McConnell, and Clint Bajakian, there’s something else here. There’s a zephyr of wistfulness blowing through it, and it’s all about time. With bouncy blonde hair and a miniature blue jacket, Boybrush is his tired dad’s spit. His career has swelled and flowed since those golden days at LucasArts. No one can navigate back there – not even him – but it doesn’t matter. A new generation wants to know what happened to history.
