For a lot of people the original Monkey Island titles mean a lot. And for the game industry as a whole, not just the adventure titles, these games have had (and still have) a lot of influence. For me? I respect them and admire them, but the first time I’ve actually completed the first two entries was only after the Special Editions came out a bit over 10 years ago. I did encounter these titles as a kid, of course, but had far more experience with other LucasArts titles and adventures from other companies. The first game in the franchise I’ve completed was actually Tales from Monkey Island and I’ve still never bothered to play Escape and Curse.
Why is this important? Well, your enjoyment from Return to Monkey Island will depend greatly on your experience with the previous games. But what I can say for sure, is that if I’m anything to go by – you can still have a lot of fun with this game, even if you don’t know the classic titles by heart.
Another important thing to establish, is that this title was designed, directed and co-written by Ron Gilbert – the creator of the series and one of the key developers of the first two entries, who left LucasArts in the 90s and hasn’t been involved with any of the sequels. So even though this game is well aware that it’s the sixth entry in the series, it has most similarities with the first two.
Though, gameplay-wise, it surprisingly completely goes away with the classic selection of verbs – in the classic LucasArts games you always had a number of verbs-actions that you could choose to perform on an object or person. It was kind of a re-imagining of the classic text-based adventure approach with the text parser, where the designers got rid of complex constructions and kept just the most important verbs available as a selection the player can make. Even later LucasArts titles, despite simplifying the list of actions even further, kept the concept alive. Yet, Return doesn’t have even the most common modern approach, with “left click to do contextual action, right click to examine” and makes all interactions entirely contextual.
This means that some objects may have two interaction options (and interestingly, the options are usually swapped – right click for action, left for examining), some may have just one, some may have one until examined, some may have one that changes many times… It’s entirely dependent on the object or a person what you can or cannot do, comment, examine, muse about. Strangely enough, even though it does mean that puzzles will have a more hands on approach, as you don’t need to juggle 10 different verb actions that can all be potentially correct, it not only doesn’t hurt the flow of the game, it mostly improves it. At least – if you like the adventuring bits, not the puzzle bits of these types of games.
Oh and yeah, what type of point and click adventure game Return to Monkey Island even is? Because in the modern market, adventure titles are usually heavily leaning into specific niches, pushing boundaries in a specialized way – be it new ways of telling a story, or creating a feeling of freeform investigation, or being a puzzle-focused title, or whatever else it may be. But Return does feel more like a classic 90s adventure game from LucasArts, for better and for worse. On one hand, it means that this title is about just having fun and adventuring, looking at cool visual style and laughing at the jokes. On the other hand, it does mean that logical consistency, “good” storytelling and truly engaging story take a back seat and you will pick up and carry around items, because you can, not because it makes sense to do it.
It’s hard to pull off a game, where it’s more fun to “hang out” with the game, rather than consider it a completed narrative or gameplay-driven experience. But luckily Return has enough charm to do it well enough. How well – that’s where that previous experience with the series comes into play. For people in love with the franchise, it’s probably an especially exciting and touching experience. For people who don’t have any emotional ties to the previous entries, it’s a jolly good time with lots of laughs and some occasional hiccups. Most of which are, luckily, easily overcome with the fantastic built-in hint book that I didn’t use as much as I expected based on my experience with the original titles.
There are a few oddities, though. The game has several settings that will impact your experience that are quite uncommon for games in general. For one – there’s a difficulty setting that makes some sections/problems to solve more complex. I’ve decided to play on Hard and enjoyed most of my time with it, but there were a couple of puzzles that felt a bit too convoluted that seem to have been simplified on the easier mode. That said, some of the puzzles seem to be less fun on easy and some make less sense. Another option is to enable a “Writer’s cut” in the options which, apparently, adds more optional dialogues and even more encounters with the characters in the game. Which I didn’t have on and not sure if enabling it would’ve made it better or could make the pacing too slow. Also, the way the controls are done in the game is incredibly inconvenient and for whatever reason there’s no way to rebind them.
In general, Return to Monkey Island really is a fun silly adventure game. It has weaker moments, it has annoying gross-out humour that I never liked, it does feel a bit too personal and meta-commentary at times, something that might mean something to people who love the series, but to me felt recognizable but pointless. But it is pretty fun and good. Oh and also it apparently has some new game plus elements too, which is unexpected from the genre. But the genre is called “adventure game” and Return to Monkey Island sure is an adventure.