Overview
This arcade title is a remake of one of the best, if not most well known point and click adventure games ever. You play Guybrush Threepwood, a man who wishes to become a pirate, but along the way he will fall in love, face the Swordmaster of Melee Island and discover the ancient mystery of Monkey Island!

The World
There are several acts to this game, varying from the various locations on Melee Island, the bowels of your ship and then the mysterious Monkey Island! A stroke of genius in this game is that you can play it in the modern remastered graphics or if you wish you can play the whole thing in the original 8-bit appearance, swapping between the two at the touch of a button!

Combat
Being a point and click game there isn’t much combat, these games mostly puzzle based, however Escape From Monkey Island began the tradition of Insult fighting that continues to the rest of the series, with its Insult Sword Fighting! After being trained to fight the actual combat is done automatically, but you win fights by saying an insult and the opponent not having the correct comeback as well as using the correct comeback to their insults. This is best typified with the now famous “You fight like a dairy farmer” being replied to with “How appropriate, you fight like a cow!”

Enemies & Comedy
With this game is introduced the mighty Ghost Pirate LeChuck, the vilest villain in the Caribbean! Along with the menacing Fester Shinetop and the Vegetarian Cannibals, the important thing about the enemies is that they are obstacles in your quest.

This game, like a lot of adventure games, uses excessive humour to keep you interested, and it does its job well. Funny dialog and humorous consequences await your actions, and there are a wealth of characters who you never need to talk to but who have great lines of dialog and several of these characters were apparently so good that they appear in other games in the series.

Conclusion
I love this game, but must admit a certain amount of nostalgia for it, as I’ve been playing it and its sequels for a decade. It’s funny, entertaining and a great revamp of a classic game, and the different puzzles vary from being simple to dastardly complex to keep you playing, but if you don’t mind missing an achievement and wimping out you can get various hints to the puzzles. Buy it, play it, love it.




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