What mindless worship? All I see is mindless bashing of the game for being a sequel.
Then you're not paying attention on either count. For the first, you gloss over everyone but Yahtzee, Barnabus, and myself. On the latter point, you're not paying attention enough to realize that the adjective "mindless" really doesn't apply. It may be an opinion that's contrary to your own, but it's at least well thought at by all three parties.
The only thing I have to say in this matter is that the only reason Tales of Monkey Island existed was because of all the fan requests towards Telltale Games. So, regardless of what the "old" fans think of the newer games, or even the games starting from Curse, you cannot deny the fact that the amount of fans that do like Tales of Monkey Island outweigh the ones who think they're useless additions.
So, to say it really blunt, and to contrast it, your opinion really doesn't matter here. It's like voting between a turd sandwich and a vaginal douche. The turd sandwich always loses by a majority, and your vote really doesn't count. Especially when it later turns out PETA got mass massacred by P. Diddy, so that the old mascot could return, making all votes made void.
Then you're not paying attention on either count. For the first, you gloss over everyone but Yahtzee, Barnabus, and myself. On the latter point, you're not paying attention enough to realize that the adjective "mindless" really doesn't apply. It may be an opinion that's contrary to your own, but it's at least well thought at by all three parties.
I should've made it clearer, but I wasn't just talking about this thread. I've seen it elsewhere. Also, I misremembered "unquestioning" as "mindless", so sorry about that. I still don't see any unquestioning worship. Just people who liked the game because it was enjoyable.
I thought Yahtzee's review wasn't very funny because he basically reiterated what people have been complaining about on the forum, and then said all MI games after the second one were horrible because they contain fanservice, using Morgan as an example. Which is about the worst example possible.
"Look, Guybrush has a fan! How horrible! He must be competent and famous and unlike his old self!" Yes, because Morgan says she is a fan, then chops off his hand and attempts to kill him. Technically, she was just hired to get his hand, so her trying to kill him is basically her idea. Of course it seems she usually does kill her bounty so she may have been trying to kill him out of habit more than anything, but still, I find it funny that Guybrush's only admirer tries to disembowel him almost immediately and mocks him to boot.
And to say that he is famous or competent also seems odd, considering no one besides Morgan has ever heard of him, he goofed up when he was supposed to kill LeChuck unleashing a vile scourge across the Caribbean, Elaine apparently has more faith in LeChuck's skills than Guybrush's and dislodging the fish bait Winslow set up is apparently what made a crack appear in the Narwhal's mast. True, it seems Guybrush is smarter than LeChuck, but LeChuck wasn't really a brainiac to begin with.
The islands complaint and whistling seemed like the only original criticisms. I still don't agree with them, but I can understand them and haven't read them in fifteen other reviews. It's nice that he reviewed ToMI since there's no such thing as bad publicity, but it feels like he phoned it in.
I thought Yahtzee's review wasn't very funny because he basically reiterated what people have been complaining about on the forum...
You don't really believe he stole his review ideas from here? If not, then why is it wrong for what he didn't like to happen to coincide with others? Doesn't that lend weight to them?
"Look, Guybrush has a fan! How horrible! He must be competent and famous and unlike his old self!" Yes, because Morgan says she is a fan, then chops off his hand and attempts to kill him.
But the "fan" part and the "trying to kill him" part are seperate. If the fan thing were removed, you could still have Morgan trying to take his hand and kill him.
I find it funny that Guybrush's only admirer tries to disembowel him almost immediately and mocks him to boot.
I'll grant that, though I'm worried about chapter 3 since I presume they're going to end up working together to escape the giant manatee. Some have conjectured that she may develop a crush on him, or at least that Elaine will think she has and become jealous. Those ideas would work better if Morgan never had any affection for him at all beforehand. If that is what happens, it'll just seem like her job has lost its important in the face of survival and she'll get to indulge her fannish love for Guybrush.
Furthermore, it's not only that she's an admirer of Guybrush (which is still a terrrible idea), it's that she rattles off a referance to every previous game. It's a clear and annoying bit of fan bait. If she somehow admirred him without it seeming wanky, it'd be much better...and in that case, it'd even be ironic, that someone managed to see something good about Guybrush. Instead, we have SURE IS MONKEY ISLAND AROUND HERE.
What I do find hilarious is that the Monkey Island article of TV Trope actuall mocks the "fan base", placing it, among others, under the "Broken Base" trope. To exactly quote the reason why Broken Base applies:
Oh God. The Monkey Island fanbase is notorious for being split, particularly for fans of a bunch of silly pirate games. Some believe that the series began and ended with Ron Gilbert, and everything from Curse onwards is a monstrosity with stupid cartoony graphics, abandoning the "funny characters in a serious plot" feel. Then we have those who came in with Curse, and believe the first two games to be quaint, and that they suffer from a lack of Dominic Armato's voice acting and Bill Tiller's beautiful art direction. On top of this, there are those who think Curse and Tales are brilliant games, just as good as the first two, but that they are still not "true" sequels, because they don't explain the ending as it was meant to be. The release of Tales has made another group rather prevalent, who like the first three but detest any others purely due to not being 2D and having keyboard controls. And then, finally, we have a rather obscure little group who doesn't care about this, but likes whatever games make them bloody laugh. The only thing that the fandom does seem to agree on is that Escape is the weakest, but even that isn't universal.
You've seriously done a good job if you basically get mocked.
Furthermore, it's not only that she's an admirer of Guybrush (which is still a terrrible idea), it's that she rattles off a referance to every previous game. It's a clear and annoying bit of fan bait. If she somehow admirred him without it seeming wanky, it'd be much better...and in that case, it'd even be ironic, that someone managed to see something good about Guybrush. Instead, we have SURE IS MONKEY ISLAND AROUND HERE.
In MI2, the events of the first game are mentioned every 10 seconds. In CMI, the events of the first two games are mentioned numerous times. In EMI, the entire introduction is essentially a quick overview of the first three games. In Episode 1, the voodoo recipe list references every thing he's done in the first 4 games, much like Morgan does in episode 2. It's not like the series has NEVER referenced Guybrush's past feats until now. Stop freaking out and exaggerating stupid minor details.
What I do find hilarious is that the Monkey Island article of TV Trope actuall mocks the "fan base", placing it, among others, under the "Broken Base" trope./QUOTE]
The Fan Dumb example was added at around the time the games were announced and the keyboard controls were confirmed. There's also an entry for the Monkey island fandom on the Ruined FOREVER page. The keyboard debate also got onto fandom_wank, which is about making fun of drama in fandom.
Monkey Island is the worst fandom I've been anywhere near in a while. (That doesn't mean I think it's the worst fandom ever)
In MI2, the events of the first game are mentioned every 10 seconds. In CMI, the events of the first two games are mentioned numerous times. In EMI, the entire introduction is essentially a quick overview of the first three games. In Episode 1, the voodoo recipe list references every thing he's done in the first 4 games, much like Morgan does in episode 2. It's not like the series has NEVER referenced Guybrush's past feats until now. Stop freaking out and exaggerating stupid minor details.
For all my complaints, I do have to agree with Palesy here on the LeFlay issue. I think it's totally overblown and not really bad at all. I really like LeFlay, and I don't think she's really some "author surrogate fan tongue-bather".
Granted I can understand the complaint. And the character could very easily have fallen into "author surrogate/fanwank" territory. SHe's written well enough, though, that she avoids it.
Monkey Island is the worst fandom I've been anywhere near in a while.
I don't know, it depends on what group of fans you're around. The weird thing about Monkey Island fans online is that they're also distributed among different sites and Internet forums, and I find that the majority of those groups actually consist of very pleasant people. It's just when they're getting into silly debates about which game is better that things can turn a bit ugly, but even then, MI fans tend to view each other as friends. Aww, I think I feel a tear welling up in my eye...
I thought Yahtzee's review wasn't very funny because he basically reiterated what people have been complaining about on the forum, and then said all MI games after the second one were horrible because they contain fanservice, using Morgan as an example. Which is about the worst example possible.
"Look, Guybrush has a fan! How horrible! He must be competent and famous and unlike his old self!" Yes, because Morgan says she is a fan, then chops off his hand and attempts to kill him. Technically, she was just hired to get his hand, so her trying to kill him is basically her idea. Of course it seems she usually does kill her bounty so she may have been trying to kill him out of habit more than anything, but still, I find it funny that Guybrush's only admirer tries to disembowel him almost immediately and mocks him to boot.
And to say that he is famous or competent also seems odd, considering no one besides Morgan has ever heard of him, he goofed up when he was supposed to kill LeChuck unleashing a vile scourge across the Caribbean, Elaine apparently has more faith in LeChuck's skills than Guybrush's and dislodging the fish bait Winslow set up is apparently what made a crack appear in the Narwhal's mast. True, it seems Guybrush is smarter than LeChuck, but LeChuck wasn't really a brainiac to begin with.
The islands complaint and whistling seemed like the only original criticisms. I still don't agree with them, but I can understand them and haven't read them in fifteen other reviews. It's nice that he reviewed ToMI since there's no such thing as bad publicity, but it feels like he phoned it in.
You do realize what Yahtzee does isn't a serious reviewing job, but mainly more like a comedy skit. His whole schtick is finding every base criticism he can about a game then tearing it to shreds. It's like if a reviewer only ever discussed the cons of a game, but took time out to discuss pros as an afterthought every once in a great while just to keep it fresh.
His reviews are obviously meant to be humorous, but those are his actual opinions. He obviously isn't a fan of Tales but notice he does say that "it does have it's moments and it's ultimately harmless." His opinions are often not popular, but he's almost always right about problems with games, it's just that they might not bother other people as much as they bother him.
Doesn't really affect anything, but adventure games are kind of his "thing," so it shouldn't come as a surprise that he might be a little harsh to a new incarnation of a quintessential series that some people feel doesn't quite get everything right.
As far as MI fans go, who the hell would think MI has the worst fanbase out there? Have you been on the internet for ten minutes? This stuff is tame! lol
I have met quite a few people due to Monkey Island. A couple of my best friends came from finding we had each played the game as kids. 1-2 are my favorite games, I love 3 as a separate thing and hate 4 (largely "eh" on Tales so far), but that doesn't stop me from loving the series as a whole, or at least the idea of it. It really does bring people together.
A bit of a useless post, but after reading through this thread, I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, Rather Dashing, for taking the time to carefully articulate the things I'd never have time to bother to say, and that I wouldn't articulate as well if I did.
The love lavished on the first two games isn't 'nostalgia,' not by a long shot. I played MI3 at release, only a few years after playing through 1 and 2. I was pretty uniformly disappointed by it, right from the get-go with the lazy resolution to a really interesting MI2 ending that had sent my head spinning, and overall with the general downgrade in artistic style from dark painterly weirdness to cartoon Disney cuteness. I actually enjoyed the writing in EMI more than CMI, and concur that just as CMI is vastly over-rated, EMI is rather under-rated.
If my 'nostalgia' for MI 2 colored my opinion of MI3, even playing so soon after the others, then why didn't my 'nostalgia' for MI1 make me dislike MI2? Nostalgia isn't the key word here. 'Quality' or 'Fidelity' are probably better ones to throw around.
I still play the series, because as other moderate cynics (Rather Dashing, Yahtzee himself, etc...) have articulated, the games are still on the whole quite funny and pretty interesting, but something was definitely lost starting with CMI. The Godfather analogy holds really well.
Another analogy I've used, to describe why I still play the games, is that at this point the Monkey Island series is like a really good friend you had in high school, who was really weird and funny and off the wall, a real unique character. Now, you're both out of college, he's settled down a bit, got a house, a job as an accountant, and has, frankly, become a bit dull, a bit status quo, a bit pedestrian. But that doesn't mean that, whenever you're both in the same town, you don't make time to hang out with the guy, because he's still a good guy, still a nice guy, and still has elements of the character he had when you were both such good pals ages ago; and it would be a shame not to take advantage of your ever-less-frequent opportunities to hang out together.
the general downgrade in artistic style from dark painterly weirdness to cartoon Disney cuteness.
Uhhh... have you actually played all the way through to Blood Island? It doesn't get much darker than that, even with 'cartoony' graphics. Also, I don't know what 'dark painterly weirdness' is.
Have to agree that Escape was a step up in some ways. It was a bit hit and miss, yes, was overly self-referential and went to far with some of the 'zany' plot elements, but to their credit they seemed to be making an effort at returning to the drier, snappier dialogue style of the original games. While I can understand many of the complaints, the almost universal slatings it gets has the smell of knee-jerk herd thinking to me, especially given that many of its flaws were already in evidence in the previous game.
The dialogue in Curse just meanders a lot of the time, and is often content to coast along on a kind of pleasant gentle whimsy in place of actual witty, sharp dialogue. Almost hate to say it, but I'm finding Tales fairly similar on that front. Which isn't to say it's terrible - the word that keeps coming to mind is 'pleasant'. But not much so far that lingers in the memory, humour wise.
Incidentally my fondness for MI2 isn't nostalgia - I replayed it for the first time in many years several months ago and not only did it still hold up, but I realised it was full of clever lines and jokes which had flown over my head first time I played it.
the general downgrade in artistic style from dark painterly weirdness to cartoon Disney cuteness.
First of all, Bill Tiller's art style is amazing. Second, MI was always cartoony, this point has been made over and over again, but here's a nice concise way to make that point:
If my 'nostalgia' for MI 2 colored my opinion of MI3, even playing so soon after the others, then why didn't my 'nostalgia' for MI1 make me dislike MI2? Nostalgia isn't the key word here. 'Quality' or 'Fidelity' are probably better ones to throw around.
Quality? Are you kidding? Curse of Monkey Island is easily one of the best adventure games I've ever played in my life, and is close to being my favorite in the series. I started with MI1 and MI2 just a little while after they each came out, long before CMI was out, and I absolutely loved CMI from the moment I started the demo up for the first time.
I really don't know where people get this idea that MI was always so "dark" and whatnot, it's always been a comedy game with a "serious" plot that only existed to facilitate comedic situations. Can you name a single dialogue tree in the entire series that doesn't have a single hilarious moment? I can't. I can't count the number of times in both MI1 and MI2 Guybrush is animated doing something ridiculous and hilarious, like stuffing a giant cotton swab (or dog, or monkey, etc.) down his pants, holding a bone in the air only to have his pants drop down, dripping spit down the front of his lip, beginning to strip, running around in a pink dress, etc.
You'll notice most of those are from Monkey Island 2 (You know, the one where the first thing you do in the game is humiliate a short toupee-wearing cross-dresser?), that's for a reason. MONKEY ISLAND 2 WAS NOT DARK, IT WAS A COMEDY. STOP THINKING MONKEY ISLAND IS DARK. That's like saying Pirates of the Caribbean was "dark" just because it had skeletal pirates.
I really don't know where people get this idea that MI was always so "dark" and whatnot, it's always been a comedy game with a "serious" plot that only existed to facilitate comedic situations.
It's not because it's funny that it can't also be scary and dark. Monkey Island is one of the scariest game I ever played. It has so many horrible elements, like Phatt Island's governor being morbidly obese and fed by tubes, skeletons being brought to life again in full details, a scene where Guybrush is chased by a zombie pirate who wants to send him to a world of infinite pain(have you not seen LeChuck face when he inserts the needle in the voodoo doll? gave me nightmares when I was little).
I don't think there were so many scary scenes in CMI, or EMI (maybe in Tales)
Monkey Island 1 and 2 definitely had humor that was seated in reality. Much of what made the game so humorous was the crazy stuff happening in an otherwise "straightforward" pirate environment. Great example is the pirate admitting he lost his contacts in the first game and quickly catching himself and going back into pirate mode.
With 4 and Tales (and to a certain extent 3), when the game's kind of "baseline" is already zany, the zany humor has less of an impact. There are no hills and valleys to it, if that makes any sense.
I doubt anyone anywhere wants a Monkey Island game to be anything other than a comedy. But context is a very important factor in humour. Humour in an environment where most everything is comic and frivolous is quite different to humour set against serious or dramatic situations.
Now, the Monkey Island games were never really *serious* serious, but they did know how to sprinkle in some grittiness and genuine characterisation when appropriate, and to create the impression that it was taking place in a world which took itself semi-seriously. Throw in the more dry, irreverent dialogue style, and the occasional lapse into the morbid, grotesque and surreal and I think we're getting close to defining that magic recipe that I believe the cartoonier later games were missing.
That's an interesting article. I wish Yahtzee had given some examples of franchise reboots where it was the case that the creators didn't like the originals. It seems like it's more likely that the new creators are fans of the original source, but not of the in-between incarnations and adaptations.
Batman is going in a new direction from the 80s-90s films, which went in a different direction than the 60s TV series, which had a different tone than the comics. The Harry Potter films had gone through several tonal evolutions compared to the first couple of films, each trying to get closer to the tone of the books. Apparently, JJ Abrams wasn't a Star Trek fan when he signed up to direct the new film.
Monkey Island has no literary source (besides the On Stranger Tides influences) so the paradigm for the characters and story are always going to be related back to the first two games.
Tales isn't a reboot, however. It's a continuation of the series (albeit in a place that a newcomer could enter the story) and can't disregard the cannon established in the last four games.
The Tales team can't dislike 3 and 4, since they're practically the same ones who made them. And it's not as though either of them stooped to the level of 90s Batman films or the Star Wars prequels.
Monkey Island isn't trying to reclaim its course, since it never went that far off anyway. Tales really feels like it's taken elements from all its predecessors and is continuing the series' evolution.
You'll notice most of those are from Monkey Island 2 (You know, the one where the first thing you do in the game is humiliate a short toupee-wearing cross-dresser?), that's for a reason. MONKEY ISLAND 2 WAS NOT DARK, IT WAS A COMEDY. STOP THINKING MONKEY ISLAND IS DARK. That's like saying Pirates of the Caribbean was "dark" just because it had skeletal pirates.
I see a lot of arguments for MI1 and 2 being funny, but none against them being darker than CMI and EMI. No one ever claimed MI1 and 2 were not humorous, but humor and "darkness" are not exclusive subjects in fiction. I count both Barton Fink and Dr. Strangelove among my favourite movies, both good examples of a combination of serious, dark storylines and humourus dialouge and/or situations.
I also think a lot of people don't realize that most of the critics of the later games, despite having some harsh words about some very prevalent and series-damaging faults, actually think that Curse, Escape, and Tales are enjoyable experiences.
They're simply not made of the same stuff, which may be why so many people love Curse the most? Then again, that doesn't completely explain the intense hatred of Escape....my head hurts trying to figure it out. Because honestly, I don't see how anyone can think of Curse the way they do. And that's not an insult to Curse-lovers, it's actual confusion. The third game has this odd fanaticism around it, with Escape acting as the Anti-Curse or somesuch. It just baffles me.
I also think a lot of people don't realize that most of the critics of the later games, despite having some harsh words about some very prevalent and series-damaging faults, actually think that Curse, Escape, and Tales are enjoyable experiences.
Absolutely. Although I think MI1 and 2 are superior to the games that followed, I am glad that the series continued after Ron Gilbert left Lucasarts. CMI is pretty fantastic up until you leave Blood Island, EMI has a lot of great moments, and TMI is shaping up to possibly be the best of the "new" Monkey Island games.
You don't really believe he stole his review ideas from here? If not, then why is it wrong for what he didn't like to happen to coincide with others? Doesn't that lend weight to them?
You do realize what Yahtzee does isn't a serious reviewing job, but mainly more like a comedy skit. His whole schtick is finding every base criticism he can about a game then tearing it to shreds. It's like if a reviewer only ever discussed the cons of a game, but took time out to discuss pros as an afterthought every once in a great while just to keep it fresh.
Fronzel: Yahtzee=Serious Secret Fawful: Yahtzee=Not Serious
Me: Yahtzee=Funny
Now, obviously, different people can take the same thing and interpret it various ways, but what I meant is Yahtzee is not a serious reviewer, I don't want him repeating the same darn things every other reviewer does ... and stops. He's supposed to be funny, if he complains about something it should either be something original that makes you look at the game in a new light or have a sarcastic analogy afterwards. Saying, "I thought the three pirates were supposed to look alike as some kind of a joke, but it turns out they just look alike because they all use the same model and we're just not supposed to notice," isn't funny, it's pointing out facts that have been reported elsewhere. I could go to IGN for that. If he had said, "The three pirates all look alike because of the confines of the Wii, meaning that PC users suffer because the Wii's storage is bollocks, which is rather like being told, after weeks of your best whining, that you can go to summer camp after all, but only if it's "Happy Times Special Needs Kids Camp" with your older brother William who takes the short bus to school." The analogy makes it mean and funny (sorry to the developmentally challenged out there, by the way) which is what I expect from Yahtzee.
But the "fan" part and the "trying to kill him" part are seperate. If the fan thing were removed, you could still have Morgan trying to take his hand and kill him.
But how is her just trying to kill him funny? I find humor in the juxtaposition.
Furthermore, it's not only that she's an admirer of Guybrush (which is still a terrrible idea), it's that she rattles off a referance to every previous game. It's a clear and annoying bit of fan bait. If she somehow admirred him without it seeming wanky, it'd be much better...and in that case, it'd even be ironic, that someone managed to see something good about Guybrush. Instead, we have SURE IS MONKEY ISLAND AROUND HERE.
Did it occur to you that there will be people who have never played any MI before playing these games? They have no idea of Guybrush's past, his history with LeChuck or even LeChuck's history. Sure they could look it up, but expecting your players to get the exposition from the internet is generally not seen as good writing.
In my opinion, Yahtzee is a hit and miss, and oftentimes, he's a miss.
Why?
Because I don't understand what the hell he's trying to bring across.
First of all, it's the speed. For native English speakers, this might be okay, but you have to remember, 90% of the entire world does NOT have English as their native language. Even if you're fluent in English with it as your second language, you will not be able to understand the language as well as natively speaking people, unless you actually are exposed to the language 24/7. Most people in the world still hear their own language continuously. It isn't as if everybody in the Netherlands are speaking English in their daily life.
Second, it's the issue I've been hearing a lot lately. Does he really hate the games he's playing? Mostly he's in the doubt with certain types of games, or at least tries too hard to nitpick, to the point that it's obvious that he's just nitpicking to nitpick, to gain fans. Sometimes it's obvious he's actually having a liking to the game.
Which brings me to the following and last point, the nitpicking just to nitpick. Unlike the Angry Video Game Nerd, Yahtzee actually only nitpicks or bashes on the game. Sure, it's for entertainment value, but it also gets old real quick. Where James Rolfe actually does oftentimes compare actual shitty games to the games he really consider good, Ben Croshaw just bashes on the more popular games with points that otherwise nobody else would seem to notice on a regular play trough. I mean, just look at James' latest video about Godzilla. He first laments on the fact that in his youth he never got to play any good Godzilla game, and then pulls out some XBox and PS2 Godzilla games, after which he concludes that he was born too early. And James actually pulls off this stunt rather often. In fact, one episode revolved around one of the greatest games ever, Super Mario Bros. 3, a game even he considers as one of the best.
Ben Croshaw actually never does that. He only tries to "humor" us with negative "reviews", and yes, people consider his rants as reviews. Sure, a few of them are fun, but sometimes you have to realize that you're getting a bit old and stale.
And it really doesn't help that people are beginning to see him as a sell-out, even when he mocked those people.
I see a lot of arguments for MI1 and 2 being funny, but none against them being darker than CMI and EMI.
I don't see what makes them "dark" in any way. The backgrounds are bright and colorful (especially in MI2), the characters frequently perform highly cartoony facial expressions, none of the character designs even border on realism. Just the fact that the storyline involves a (cartoony) zombie who enjoys using voodoo somehow makes a game dark? I also have no clue how anyone could ever consider MI "scary" whatsoever.
I don't see what makes them "dark" in any way. The backgrounds are bright and colorful (especially in MI2), the characters frequently perform highly cartoony facial expressions, none of the character designs even border on realism. Just the fact that the storyline involves a (cartoony) zombie who enjoys using voodoo somehow makes a game dark? I also have no clue how anyone could ever consider MI "scary" whatsoever.
I wouldn't call Monkey Island "dark" or "scary" myself. I would say the world takes itself seriously despite the ludicrous nature of it, and there's a subtle difference in tone between that and a cartoon that treats itself like a cartoon. A subtle difference that makes a large impact on how the story comes off.
First of all, it's the speed. For native English speakers, this might be okay, but you have to remember, 90% of the entire world does NOT have English as their native language. Even if you're fluent in English with it as your second language, you will not be able to understand the language as well as natively speaking people, unless you actually are exposed to the language 24/7. Most people in the world still hear their own language continuously. It isn't as if everybody in the Netherlands are speaking English in their daily life.
what? you want a comedian who uses fast talking as part of his act to do easy listening variations for english disabled listeners. would you like him to release transcripts as well?
his "reviews" are harmless fun, usually exagerating issues you probably already noticed as you were playing. if your not already playing the game yahtzee's reviews are unlikely to convince you to buy them.
it's like any comedian in a standup club, most of them raise a topic then point out what they find inane or stupid about it. yahtzee's just applying that in a weekly game review.
if you want good game reviews read gamerevolution. they're slowly becoming too gushy about things, but duke at least still calls it realistically. (not insta hate, but not rasing the review scores based on how fat his wallet gets either)
They're simply not made of the same stuff, which may be why so many people love Curse the most? Then again, that doesn't completely explain the intense hatred of Escape....my head hurts trying to figure it out. Because honestly, I don't see how anyone can think of Curse the way they do. And that's not an insult to Curse-lovers, it's actual confusion. The third game has this odd fanaticism around it, with Escape acting as the Anti-Curse or somesuch. It just baffles me.
I think it has a lot to do with the graphics. CMI is just charming, picturesque. Some people like that, some people don't. I like it. Of course EMI went in a different direction, which takes away some of its charm - although in most aspects, it's a solid game. It's just that there's a certain magic about the way CMI looks, and I guess you either like it or you don't.
I find myself in a difficult position with the later games. I really, really disagree with retconning the ending like that, and want to say that Curse doesn't match up to the first two, but the thing is... it's just so bloody good.
It has a fantastically realised world. At first we have Plunder Island, with its perilous jungles, coves of smugglers, towns of retired pirates still yearning for the life at sea, legends of demonic chickens. And then once we leave Plunder, we're faced with what feels (more than any other point in the series) with a true piratey adventure: singing pirates, sword fights, sea battles, and a climax against a wonderfully over-the-top French buccaneer. And as if it couldn't get any better, we're then shipwrecked on Blood Island, one of the most dark, atmospheric, spooky places in the entire series. Like Plunder, it also has a rich history: the tragedy of the Goodsoup family, the lost Welshman stuck at sea, the smugglers holed up on a deserted island (the only characters I found a little out of place were, oddly enough, the cannibals).
That's the thing: Curse shouldn't exist, and I shouldn't like it. But despite that, I actually find it to be the best game in the series. Much as I like the first two games, they didn't hit quite as many right notes as these four chapters did.
And then... well, I prefer not to think of the Carnival of the Damned. To paraphrase one of Yahtzee's own expressions, it's like when you're eating a delicious sandwich full of Branston Pickle only to have it yanked away and replaced with two blocks of wood stuck together with watery ejaculate. It's a testament to the rest of the game that I still rank it so highly.
Come to think about it, it may be these two chapters that leave so many CMI/LCR fans sour: not only do they have nothing to do with the rest of the game (which climaxed on Blood Island) but they also chuck away any atmosphere for the sake of a bad Disneyland parody (why does EMI get so much flak for lack of pirateyness this but not this?) LeChuck is not scary in the slightest, and spends most of his time giving a convoluted and ultimately annoying explanation for LCR's ending, removing any mystery and making the whole series' history seem a bit incestuous (LeChuck was somehow involved with everything?) Why oh why did they devote the last two chapters to wrapping up the plot of LeChuck's Revenge rather than the plot of the actual game?
For those trying to understand why it is Escape that gets all the hate rather than Curse, let me put it like this: it is these two chapters that Escape seem to follow the formula of, rather than the four chapters that all of the Curse fans truly love it for.
I don't see what makes them "dark" in any way. The backgrounds are bright and colorful (especially in MI2), the characters frequently perform highly cartoony facial expressions, none of the character designs even border on realism. Just the fact that the storyline involves a (cartoony) zombie who enjoys using voodoo somehow makes a game dark? I also have no clue how anyone could ever consider MI "scary" whatsoever.
For starters, I'm not the one who started using the word dark in this debate. I agree it's probably not the best word to describe the underlying differences between the first two MI games and the ones that came after, but for lack of a better term, I'll use it for now.
Dark in this context does not mean that the background art is painted in dark colors or that it needs to be scary (although MI2 has a lot more tension and feeling of threat than the other Monkey Island games - Guybrush can even ask the voodoo lady to kill him because he is so scared of LeChuck). Dark comedy is not the same as tragicomedy or fiction that is both scary and funny at the same time. The "darkness" of the first two Monkey Island games refer to the underlying irony that is a major source of humor - and even a major plot element - in Gilbert, Schafer and Grossmans' Monkey Island universe. Tim Schafer explains this in an article from the Adventurer from 1992 which was recently posted in another thread over at the general board:
"In Monkey Island 2, a lot of people were hoping for a different ending. Monkey 2 was kind of a self-parodying game, and that's a taste of humor that's not for everybody. It kind of makes fun of itself and all other computer games in many ways, especially in that every time you expected a payoff, it would do something that was kind of a non-payoff. The ending for Monkey 2 was considered kind of a non-payoff, but it was a joke, and some people didn't like that."
This kind of ironic humor and story twists run through SMI:
Guybrush completes the three trials, but is never able to hand in the final object and get acknowledged as a pirate
As soon as Elaine warms up to him, she is kidnapped
He gathers a crew, but they refuse to follow his orders
When he finally gets the voodoo root that can kill LeChuck, the ghost ship has gone back to Melee
Everyone but Guybrush can seemingly navigate the maze under Monkey Island without the head of the navigator
When he finally catches up with LeChuck and Elaine, it turns out she had the situation under controll the whole time.
In MI2 it's probably even more defining:
Guybrush has defeated LeChuck, but noone believes him - and those who do, either trivialize it or don't care.
He starts out whith a lot of money and treasure, but is robbed at the very beginning of the game.
Guybrush completes the map that will lead him to Big Whoop, but leChuck kidnaps Wally before he can analyze the map.
Though sheer luck he finds Big Whoop, but is left hanging from a rope, unable to save himself or the treasure.
As he is about to be saved by Elaine, his rope snaps.
Big Whoop turns out to just contain an E-ticket, and when Guybrush is finally able to confront LeChuck, he instead finds himself a kid in an amusement park.
This kind of humor has a lot in common with some of Monty Python's semi-dark comedy, especially their full-length movies. The ending of Holy Grail, for instance, is very similar to the ending of Monkey 2 - a dark ironic ending, robbing the viewers from the final payoff.
This dark irony is gone almost completely from CMI and the other games that followed, and the ironic fate that always seems to befall Guybrush is reinterprated as Guybrush being incompetent. CMI is a much simpler, cuter story, where Guybrush gets Elaine into trouble, but saves her and marries her in the end, while also defeating LeChuck.
Monkey Island 3 and 4 were enjoyable the first time around, even if they weren't as good as 1 or 2. Escape and Curse are the same level of enjoyment. They're good adventures. Curse gets too much credit, Escape gets too little.
This, exactly this, forever this, and FINALLY SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH ME!
For those trying to understand why it is Escape that gets all the hate rather than Curse, let me put it like this: it is these two chapters that Escape seem to follow the formula of, rather than the four chapters that all of the Curse fans truly love it for.
Exactly, I agree with the whole view on this, Curse is amazing in its own way, the only let down is the rushed ending, which has been confirmed many times by the people who worked on the game, the fact that the last two chapters barely make up a quarter of the game leaves the rest of the game to shine.
I guess you could also say that Curse had the advantage of being the bigger bang? For years there was no Monkey Island and now with Curse, it's back, the Characters Have Voices, the art style and interface is brilliant, the music is done with proper instruments and the atmosphere of Plunder, Skull and Blood Island are just brilliant.
Comments
So, to say it really blunt, and to contrast it, your opinion really doesn't matter here. It's like voting between a turd sandwich and a vaginal douche. The turd sandwich always loses by a majority, and your vote really doesn't count. Especially when it later turns out PETA got mass massacred by P. Diddy, so that the old mascot could return, making all votes made void.
"Look, Guybrush has a fan! How horrible! He must be competent and famous and unlike his old self!" Yes, because Morgan says she is a fan, then chops off his hand and attempts to kill him. Technically, she was just hired to get his hand, so her trying to kill him is basically her idea. Of course it seems she usually does kill her bounty so she may have been trying to kill him out of habit more than anything, but still, I find it funny that Guybrush's only admirer tries to disembowel him almost immediately and mocks him to boot.
And to say that he is famous or competent also seems odd, considering no one besides Morgan has ever heard of him, he goofed up when he was supposed to kill LeChuck unleashing a vile scourge across the Caribbean, Elaine apparently has more faith in LeChuck's skills than Guybrush's and dislodging the fish bait Winslow set up is apparently what made a crack appear in the Narwhal's mast. True, it seems Guybrush is smarter than LeChuck, but LeChuck wasn't really a brainiac to begin with.
The islands complaint and whistling seemed like the only original criticisms. I still don't agree with them, but I can understand them and haven't read them in fifteen other reviews. It's nice that he reviewed ToMI since there's no such thing as bad publicity, but it feels like he phoned it in.
But the "fan" part and the "trying to kill him" part are seperate. If the fan thing were removed, you could still have Morgan trying to take his hand and kill him.
I'll grant that, though I'm worried about chapter 3 since I presume they're going to end up working together to escape the giant manatee. Some have conjectured that she may develop a crush on him, or at least that Elaine will think she has and become jealous. Those ideas would work better if Morgan never had any affection for him at all beforehand. If that is what happens, it'll just seem like her job has lost its important in the face of survival and she'll get to indulge her fannish love for Guybrush.
Furthermore, it's not only that she's an admirer of Guybrush (which is still a terrrible idea), it's that she rattles off a referance to every previous game. It's a clear and annoying bit of fan bait. If she somehow admirred him without it seeming wanky, it'd be much better...and in that case, it'd even be ironic, that someone managed to see something good about Guybrush. Instead, we have SURE IS MONKEY ISLAND AROUND HERE.
You've seriously done a good job if you basically get mocked.
In MI2, the events of the first game are mentioned every 10 seconds. In CMI, the events of the first two games are mentioned numerous times. In EMI, the entire introduction is essentially a quick overview of the first three games. In Episode 1, the voodoo recipe list references every thing he's done in the first 4 games, much like Morgan does in episode 2. It's not like the series has NEVER referenced Guybrush's past feats until now. Stop freaking out and exaggerating stupid minor details.
Granted I can understand the complaint. And the character could very easily have fallen into "author surrogate/fanwank" territory. SHe's written well enough, though, that she avoids it.
You do realize what Yahtzee does isn't a serious reviewing job, but mainly more like a comedy skit. His whole schtick is finding every base criticism he can about a game then tearing it to shreds. It's like if a reviewer only ever discussed the cons of a game, but took time out to discuss pros as an afterthought every once in a great while just to keep it fresh.
Doesn't really affect anything, but adventure games are kind of his "thing," so it shouldn't come as a surprise that he might be a little harsh to a new incarnation of a quintessential series that some people feel doesn't quite get everything right.
As far as MI fans go, who the hell would think MI has the worst fanbase out there? Have you been on the internet for ten minutes? This stuff is tame! lol
I have met quite a few people due to Monkey Island. A couple of my best friends came from finding we had each played the game as kids. 1-2 are my favorite games, I love 3 as a separate thing and hate 4 (largely "eh" on Tales so far), but that doesn't stop me from loving the series as a whole, or at least the idea of it. It really does bring people together.
Strangely enough, that's exactly how I feel about Yahtzee ^^'
The love lavished on the first two games isn't 'nostalgia,' not by a long shot. I played MI3 at release, only a few years after playing through 1 and 2. I was pretty uniformly disappointed by it, right from the get-go with the lazy resolution to a really interesting MI2 ending that had sent my head spinning, and overall with the general downgrade in artistic style from dark painterly weirdness to cartoon Disney cuteness. I actually enjoyed the writing in EMI more than CMI, and concur that just as CMI is vastly over-rated, EMI is rather under-rated.
If my 'nostalgia' for MI 2 colored my opinion of MI3, even playing so soon after the others, then why didn't my 'nostalgia' for MI1 make me dislike MI2? Nostalgia isn't the key word here. 'Quality' or 'Fidelity' are probably better ones to throw around.
I still play the series, because as other moderate cynics (Rather Dashing, Yahtzee himself, etc...) have articulated, the games are still on the whole quite funny and pretty interesting, but something was definitely lost starting with CMI. The Godfather analogy holds really well.
Another analogy I've used, to describe why I still play the games, is that at this point the Monkey Island series is like a really good friend you had in high school, who was really weird and funny and off the wall, a real unique character. Now, you're both out of college, he's settled down a bit, got a house, a job as an accountant, and has, frankly, become a bit dull, a bit status quo, a bit pedestrian. But that doesn't mean that, whenever you're both in the same town, you don't make time to hang out with the guy, because he's still a good guy, still a nice guy, and still has elements of the character he had when you were both such good pals ages ago; and it would be a shame not to take advantage of your ever-less-frequent opportunities to hang out together.
The dialogue in Curse just meanders a lot of the time, and is often content to coast along on a kind of pleasant gentle whimsy in place of actual witty, sharp dialogue. Almost hate to say it, but I'm finding Tales fairly similar on that front. Which isn't to say it's terrible - the word that keeps coming to mind is 'pleasant'. But not much so far that lingers in the memory, humour wise.
Incidentally my fondness for MI2 isn't nostalgia - I replayed it for the first time in many years several months ago and not only did it still hold up, but I realised it was full of clever lines and jokes which had flown over my head first time I played it.
First of all, Bill Tiller's art style is amazing. Second, MI was always cartoony, this point has been made over and over again, but here's a nice concise way to make that point:
Quality? Are you kidding? Curse of Monkey Island is easily one of the best adventure games I've ever played in my life, and is close to being my favorite in the series. I started with MI1 and MI2 just a little while after they each came out, long before CMI was out, and I absolutely loved CMI from the moment I started the demo up for the first time.
I really don't know where people get this idea that MI was always so "dark" and whatnot, it's always been a comedy game with a "serious" plot that only existed to facilitate comedic situations. Can you name a single dialogue tree in the entire series that doesn't have a single hilarious moment? I can't. I can't count the number of times in both MI1 and MI2 Guybrush is animated doing something ridiculous and hilarious, like stuffing a giant cotton swab (or dog, or monkey, etc.) down his pants, holding a bone in the air only to have his pants drop down, dripping spit down the front of his lip, beginning to strip, running around in a pink dress, etc.
You'll notice most of those are from Monkey Island 2 (You know, the one where the first thing you do in the game is humiliate a short toupee-wearing cross-dresser?), that's for a reason. MONKEY ISLAND 2 WAS NOT DARK, IT WAS A COMEDY. STOP THINKING MONKEY ISLAND IS DARK. That's like saying Pirates of the Caribbean was "dark" just because it had skeletal pirates.
It's not because it's funny that it can't also be scary and dark. Monkey Island is one of the scariest game I ever played. It has so many horrible elements, like Phatt Island's governor being morbidly obese and fed by tubes, skeletons being brought to life again in full details, a scene where Guybrush is chased by a zombie pirate who wants to send him to a world of infinite pain(have you not seen LeChuck face when he inserts the needle in the voodoo doll? gave me nightmares when I was little).
I don't think there were so many scary scenes in CMI, or EMI (maybe in Tales)
For me this game is both scary AND funny
With 4 and Tales (and to a certain extent 3), when the game's kind of "baseline" is already zany, the zany humor has less of an impact. There are no hills and valleys to it, if that makes any sense.
It was, though.
Now, the Monkey Island games were never really *serious* serious, but they did know how to sprinkle in some grittiness and genuine characterisation when appropriate, and to create the impression that it was taking place in a world which took itself semi-seriously. Throw in the more dry, irreverent dialogue style, and the occasional lapse into the morbid, grotesque and surreal and I think we're getting close to defining that magic recipe that I believe the cartoonier later games were missing.
Besides, it's impossible that in his entire life the only games he ever liked were like 5....
He must have really liked at least one of the ones who reviewed or his game library should be incredibly tiny...
Batman is going in a new direction from the 80s-90s films, which went in a different direction than the 60s TV series, which had a different tone than the comics. The Harry Potter films had gone through several tonal evolutions compared to the first couple of films, each trying to get closer to the tone of the books. Apparently, JJ Abrams wasn't a Star Trek fan when he signed up to direct the new film.
Monkey Island has no literary source (besides the On Stranger Tides influences) so the paradigm for the characters and story are always going to be related back to the first two games.
Tales isn't a reboot, however. It's a continuation of the series (albeit in a place that a newcomer could enter the story) and can't disregard the cannon established in the last four games.
The Tales team can't dislike 3 and 4, since they're practically the same ones who made them. And it's not as though either of them stooped to the level of 90s Batman films or the Star Wars prequels.
Monkey Island isn't trying to reclaim its course, since it never went that far off anyway. Tales really feels like it's taken elements from all its predecessors and is continuing the series' evolution.
I see a lot of arguments for MI1 and 2 being funny, but none against them being darker than CMI and EMI. No one ever claimed MI1 and 2 were not humorous, but humor and "darkness" are not exclusive subjects in fiction. I count both Barton Fink and Dr. Strangelove among my favourite movies, both good examples of a combination of serious, dark storylines and humourus dialouge and/or situations.
They're simply not made of the same stuff, which may be why so many people love Curse the most? Then again, that doesn't completely explain the intense hatred of Escape....my head hurts trying to figure it out. Because honestly, I don't see how anyone can think of Curse the way they do. And that's not an insult to Curse-lovers, it's actual confusion. The third game has this odd fanaticism around it, with Escape acting as the Anti-Curse or somesuch. It just baffles me.
Absolutely. Although I think MI1 and 2 are superior to the games that followed, I am glad that the series continued after Ron Gilbert left Lucasarts. CMI is pretty fantastic up until you leave Blood Island, EMI has a lot of great moments, and TMI is shaping up to possibly be the best of the "new" Monkey Island games.
Fronzel: Yahtzee=Serious Secret Fawful: Yahtzee=Not Serious
Me: Yahtzee=Funny
Now, obviously, different people can take the same thing and interpret it various ways, but what I meant is Yahtzee is not a serious reviewer, I don't want him repeating the same darn things every other reviewer does ... and stops. He's supposed to be funny, if he complains about something it should either be something original that makes you look at the game in a new light or have a sarcastic analogy afterwards. Saying, "I thought the three pirates were supposed to look alike as some kind of a joke, but it turns out they just look alike because they all use the same model and we're just not supposed to notice," isn't funny, it's pointing out facts that have been reported elsewhere. I could go to IGN for that. If he had said, "The three pirates all look alike because of the confines of the Wii, meaning that PC users suffer because the Wii's storage is bollocks, which is rather like being told, after weeks of your best whining, that you can go to summer camp after all, but only if it's "Happy Times Special Needs Kids Camp" with your older brother William who takes the short bus to school." The analogy makes it mean and funny (sorry to the developmentally challenged out there, by the way) which is what I expect from Yahtzee.
But how is her just trying to kill him funny? I find humor in the juxtaposition.
Did it occur to you that there will be people who have never played any MI before playing these games? They have no idea of Guybrush's past, his history with LeChuck or even LeChuck's history. Sure they could look it up, but expecting your players to get the exposition from the internet is generally not seen as good writing.
Why?
Because I don't understand what the hell he's trying to bring across.
First of all, it's the speed. For native English speakers, this might be okay, but you have to remember, 90% of the entire world does NOT have English as their native language. Even if you're fluent in English with it as your second language, you will not be able to understand the language as well as natively speaking people, unless you actually are exposed to the language 24/7. Most people in the world still hear their own language continuously. It isn't as if everybody in the Netherlands are speaking English in their daily life.
Second, it's the issue I've been hearing a lot lately. Does he really hate the games he's playing? Mostly he's in the doubt with certain types of games, or at least tries too hard to nitpick, to the point that it's obvious that he's just nitpicking to nitpick, to gain fans. Sometimes it's obvious he's actually having a liking to the game.
Which brings me to the following and last point, the nitpicking just to nitpick. Unlike the Angry Video Game Nerd, Yahtzee actually only nitpicks or bashes on the game. Sure, it's for entertainment value, but it also gets old real quick. Where James Rolfe actually does oftentimes compare actual shitty games to the games he really consider good, Ben Croshaw just bashes on the more popular games with points that otherwise nobody else would seem to notice on a regular play trough. I mean, just look at James' latest video about Godzilla. He first laments on the fact that in his youth he never got to play any good Godzilla game, and then pulls out some XBox and PS2 Godzilla games, after which he concludes that he was born too early. And James actually pulls off this stunt rather often. In fact, one episode revolved around one of the greatest games ever, Super Mario Bros. 3, a game even he considers as one of the best.
Ben Croshaw actually never does that. He only tries to "humor" us with negative "reviews", and yes, people consider his rants as reviews. Sure, a few of them are fun, but sometimes you have to realize that you're getting a bit old and stale.
And it really doesn't help that people are beginning to see him as a sell-out, even when he mocked those people.
I don't see what makes them "dark" in any way. The backgrounds are bright and colorful (especially in MI2), the characters frequently perform highly cartoony facial expressions, none of the character designs even border on realism. Just the fact that the storyline involves a (cartoony) zombie who enjoys using voodoo somehow makes a game dark? I also have no clue how anyone could ever consider MI "scary" whatsoever.
his "reviews" are harmless fun, usually exagerating issues you probably already noticed as you were playing. if your not already playing the game yahtzee's reviews are unlikely to convince you to buy them.
it's like any comedian in a standup club, most of them raise a topic then point out what they find inane or stupid about it. yahtzee's just applying that in a weekly game review.
if you want good game reviews read gamerevolution. they're slowly becoming too gushy about things, but duke at least still calls it realistically. (not insta hate, but not rasing the review scores based on how fat his wallet gets either)
http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/wii/tales-of-monkey-island they gave it a B, which i would assume is 85% they review all the epsiodes seperately so one dodgy rush job by tell tale won't get ignored in the overall result.
It has a fantastically realised world. At first we have Plunder Island, with its perilous jungles, coves of smugglers, towns of retired pirates still yearning for the life at sea, legends of demonic chickens. And then once we leave Plunder, we're faced with what feels (more than any other point in the series) with a true piratey adventure: singing pirates, sword fights, sea battles, and a climax against a wonderfully over-the-top French buccaneer. And as if it couldn't get any better, we're then shipwrecked on Blood Island, one of the most dark, atmospheric, spooky places in the entire series. Like Plunder, it also has a rich history: the tragedy of the Goodsoup family, the lost Welshman stuck at sea, the smugglers holed up on a deserted island (the only characters I found a little out of place were, oddly enough, the cannibals).
That's the thing: Curse shouldn't exist, and I shouldn't like it. But despite that, I actually find it to be the best game in the series. Much as I like the first two games, they didn't hit quite as many right notes as these four chapters did.
And then... well, I prefer not to think of the Carnival of the Damned. To paraphrase one of Yahtzee's own expressions, it's like when you're eating a delicious sandwich full of Branston Pickle only to have it yanked away and replaced with two blocks of wood stuck together with watery ejaculate. It's a testament to the rest of the game that I still rank it so highly.
Come to think about it, it may be these two chapters that leave so many CMI/LCR fans sour: not only do they have nothing to do with the rest of the game (which climaxed on Blood Island) but they also chuck away any atmosphere for the sake of a bad Disneyland parody (why does EMI get so much flak for lack of pirateyness this but not this?) LeChuck is not scary in the slightest, and spends most of his time giving a convoluted and ultimately annoying explanation for LCR's ending, removing any mystery and making the whole series' history seem a bit incestuous (LeChuck was somehow involved with everything?) Why oh why did they devote the last two chapters to wrapping up the plot of LeChuck's Revenge rather than the plot of the actual game?
For those trying to understand why it is Escape that gets all the hate rather than Curse, let me put it like this: it is these two chapters that Escape seem to follow the formula of, rather than the four chapters that all of the Curse fans truly love it for.
For starters, I'm not the one who started using the word dark in this debate. I agree it's probably not the best word to describe the underlying differences between the first two MI games and the ones that came after, but for lack of a better term, I'll use it for now.
Dark in this context does not mean that the background art is painted in dark colors or that it needs to be scary (although MI2 has a lot more tension and feeling of threat than the other Monkey Island games - Guybrush can even ask the voodoo lady to kill him because he is so scared of LeChuck). Dark comedy is not the same as tragicomedy or fiction that is both scary and funny at the same time. The "darkness" of the first two Monkey Island games refer to the underlying irony that is a major source of humor - and even a major plot element - in Gilbert, Schafer and Grossmans' Monkey Island universe. Tim Schafer explains this in an article from the Adventurer from 1992 which was recently posted in another thread over at the general board:
"In Monkey Island 2, a lot of people were hoping for a different ending. Monkey 2 was kind of a self-parodying game, and that's a taste of humor that's not for everybody. It kind of makes fun of itself and all other computer games in many ways, especially in that every time you expected a payoff, it would do something that was kind of a non-payoff. The ending for Monkey 2 was considered kind of a non-payoff, but it was a joke, and some people didn't like that."
This kind of ironic humor and story twists run through SMI:
In MI2 it's probably even more defining:
This kind of humor has a lot in common with some of Monty Python's semi-dark comedy, especially their full-length movies. The ending of Holy Grail, for instance, is very similar to the ending of Monkey 2 - a dark ironic ending, robbing the viewers from the final payoff.
This dark irony is gone almost completely from CMI and the other games that followed, and the ironic fate that always seems to befall Guybrush is reinterprated as Guybrush being incompetent. CMI is a much simpler, cuter story, where Guybrush gets Elaine into trouble, but saves her and marries her in the end, while also defeating LeChuck.
This, exactly this, forever this, and FINALLY SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH ME!
Exactly, I agree with the whole view on this, Curse is amazing in its own way, the only let down is the rushed ending, which has been confirmed many times by the people who worked on the game, the fact that the last two chapters barely make up a quarter of the game leaves the rest of the game to shine.
I guess you could also say that Curse had the advantage of being the bigger bang? For years there was no Monkey Island and now with Curse, it's back, the Characters Have Voices, the art style and interface is brilliant, the music is done with proper instruments and the atmosphere of Plunder, Skull and Blood Island are just brilliant.
Universal God who rates you games, so you best listen to man!. Only god stuff will come if you listen!.
Yahtzee for El Presidente.:p
Also he is the fastest talking reviewer, he reviews games faster than you can play a game of Yahtzee, thereby his name