Monkey Island 2 isn't necessarily the best graphic adventure game. Yup it's a best selling game, it's well received game, but it's not necessarily the better then it's previous game or it's other brothers and sisters in the golden gods of Graphic adventure Lucasarts games. The massive technical leap of Sam and Max Hit the Road easily overshadows everything Monkey Island 2 tries to do. Instead Monkey Island 2 feels a bit like a stop gap in Lucasarts games.

It's not necessarily a bad game but it does a lot of odd things to make it just difficult to enjoyably.

Let me start from the begining.

I tend to replay Lucasarts adventure games for inspiration. Steve Purcell and Peter Chan's background work inspire me, their beautiful composition and easy to read nature are the better then anyone else out there. But I will always use ScummVM in order to replay these game, reading off ripped CDs I've owned for over 15 years, when an Electronics Boutique was going out of business. Well I was fortunate enough to be gifted Monkey Island 2 Special edition, but was sitting there for close to a year and a half and I never really did push myself to use it until I had the lust for achievement points running through my vain.

Easily Monkey Island 1 special edition was really the most painful of the re-imagined graphics I have ever seen before. But something about the new work in Monkey Island 2, gave me an opportunity to give it a second chance. Now, as an artist, I could easily just critique all because there's an easy button to flip back and forth, but I do feel that Lucasarts did a half way decent job at really making the graphics easily readable for the viewer to find hints and objexts. The original Monkey Island 2 was one of the first big leaps in technology using scanned in art. So Steve Purcell's art, which now is now showcased in Pixar Studio's art gallery, is every bit noticeable. but there was no alteraterations. No tweaking of colors, so everything looks washed out. To be fair this isn't just the special edition the original game running on ScummVM also looks washed out.

Now the animation isn't nessicarly horrible, using prerendered models, do actually add a bit more flow and sway. And they never do PUSH the faces into something horrible mess. But the original art and animation does add it's own unique charm, the drinking game man nervious twitchy leg is audorable and makes you like him more before you kill him.

It's greatest sin is it's abuse of sailing back and forth to fetch items from each island. Finding obscure items to solve a puzzle when in reality simplicity of the Jail Cell puzzle from the Pirates of the Carabean ride solves it. Still it's own silly logic has it's own limits, I'm often reminded how steam punk logic isn't terribly broken when you start building things a bit too far. The whole feeding apparatus and Stan the modern day salesmen work in monkey island world. It's just the whole ending amusement park and Guybrush and Lee Chuck were brothers all along just goes too far.

It's not as a fan that I don't enjoy the silliness, in fact I actually crave for the weirdiness in almost all my games. I just feel that in Monkey Island 2, the weirdiness doesn't have a real stable leg to stand on it's own. Steampunk fiction tries really hard to PUSH it's way into fantasy and other worldly themes, and they actually work. Now, the story of Monkey Island 2 does help illustrate just how criminal Guybrush is with all his WACKY Antics of adventure game logic. If it had gone further, maybe it'd be up to par with Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacles endings of just going into random destruction to solve their own problems.

Again, I'm impressed with the work Lucasarts did to help maintain this game. There's a point where I want to call them the "devil" as much as any self rightous internet blogger would. But still I can play this game on literally any laptop, on beautiful quality, and the original pixel art is unspoiled. It's a pretty much a half recommendation, but compared to Tales of Monkey Island which is pushing the series into more relevant

Monkey Island 2 isn't necessarily the best graphic adventure game. Yup it's a best selling game, it's well received game, but it's not necessarily the better then it's previous game or it's other brothers and sisters in the golden gods of Graphic adventure Lucasarts games. The massive technical leap of Sam and Max Hit the Road easily overshadows everything Monkey Island 2 tries to do. Instead Monkey Island 2 feels a bit like a stop gap in Lucasarts games.

It's not necessarily a bad game but it does a lot of odd things to make it just difficult to enjoyably.

Let me start from the begining.

I tend to replay Lucasarts adventure games for inspiration. Steve Purcell and Peter Chan's background work inspire me, their beautiful composition and easy to read nature are the better then anyone else out there. But I will always use ScummVM in order to replay these game, reading off ripped CDs I've owned for over 15 years, when an Electronics Boutique was going out of business. Well I was fortunate enough to be gifted Monkey Island 2 Special edition, but was sitting there for close to a year and a half and I never really did push myself to use it until I had the lust for achievement points running through my vain.

Easily Monkey Island 1 special edition was really the most painful of the re-imagined graphics I have ever seen before. But something about the new work in Monkey Island 2, gave me an opportunity to give it a second chance. Now, as an artist, I could easily just critique all because there's an easy button to flip back and forth, but I do feel that Lucasarts did a half way decent job at really making the graphics easily readable for the viewer to find hints and objexts. The original Monkey Island 2 was one of the first big leaps in technology using scanned in art. So Steve Purcell's art, which now is now showcased in Pixar Studio's art gallery, is every bit noticeable. but there was no alteraterations. No tweaking of colors, so everything looks washed out. To be fair this isn't just the special edition the original game running on ScummVM also looks washed out.

Now the animation isn't nessicarly horrible, using prerendered models, do actually add a bit more flow and sway. And they never do PUSH the faces into something horrible mess. But the original art and animation does add it's own unique charm, the drinking game man nervious twitchy leg is audorable and makes you like him more before you kill him.

It's greatest sin is it's abuse of sailing back and forth to fetch items from each island. Finding obscure items to solve a puzzle when in reality simplicity of the Jail Cell puzzle from the Pirates of the Carabean ride solves it. Still it's own silly logic has it's own limits, I'm often reminded how steam punk logic isn't terribly broken when you start building things a bit too far. The whole feeding apparatus and Stan the modern day salesmen work in monkey island world. It's just the whole ending amusement park and Guybrush and Lee Chuck were brothers all along just goes too far.

It's not as a fan that I don't enjoy the silliness, in fact I actually crave for the weirdiness in almost all my games. I just feel that in Monkey Island 2, the weirdiness doesn't have a real stable leg to stand on it's own. Steampunk fiction tries really hard to PUSH it's way into fantasy and other worldly themes, and they actually work. Now, the story of Monkey Island 2 does help illustrate just how criminal Guybrush is with all his WACKY Antics of adventure game logic. If it had gone further, maybe it'd be up to par with Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacles endings of just going into random destruction to solve their own problems.

Again, I'm impressed with the work Lucasarts did to help maintain this game. There's a point where I want to call them the "devil" as much as any self rightous internet blogger would. But still I can play this game on literally any laptop, on beautiful quality, and the original pixel art is unspoiled. It's a pretty much a half recommendation, but compared to Tales of Monkey Island which is pushing the series into more relevant