Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge

The Good
This game shows great comic graphics, laugh-out-loud humor and that great LucasArts interface. All this may not seem much at now, since the adventure genre is practically dead, but if you really observe you can see that the Gilbert brothers really did pump everything they have in the sequel to MI.

The Bad
Not much really to put here but maybe the game could have been a tiny bit longer. But hey if it's not long enough for you, go back and play it again. You won't be disappointed.

The Bottom Line
This game may be looked on by others from now as a one of the best adventure games in the now-dying genre. If you can still dust off a copy of this gem, you will see why it was a milestone and one of the best successors to one of the best games ever made (in my opinion.) If you don't already have it.....BUY IT!!!!

The Good
Since The Secret of Monkey Island sold well, it was not surprising that LucasArts decided to do a follow-up. After Guybrush Threepwood completes the three trials and dealt with LeChuck, he is now searching for the legendary “Big Whoop” treasure. Much of what you have seen in the first game can be seen in the sequel. You have the copy protection screen, this time requiring users to input a number of ingredients needed to make a voodoo recipe. You have to turn the wheel in such a way that the numbers match what is on the screen, or you won't get into the game.

What's unique about Monkey Island 2 is that it offers two game modes, the normal mode and a “Lite” version. The “Lite” version is aimed squarely at a younger audience and is much shorter than the normal mode. It also bypasses a few puzzles, so you won't, for example, get to participate in the Spitting Contest or resurrect Rap Scallion. The game is told in flashback since we see Guybrush hanging by a thread and telling Elaine how he found Big Whoop. After this, you have the nice credits with a beautiful rendition of the MI theme song. The only thing I enjoyed out of this was the dancing monkeys and Guybrush telling them to get lost.

When I finally got into the game, I noticed how neat the revamped interface is, removing the Turn On/Turn Off commands (Since you didn't get to use these commands in the first game, they were unnecessary.) and adding proper pictures to inventory items. I also noticed the background music while you play, and I enjoyed listening to those reggae tunes. I actually found myself tapping my feet to the music at times.

Most of the characters from the first game are here, and there are as funny as they were back then. Speaking of funny, Monkey Island 2 is always known for its humor. Examples: You can walk into the woodsmith's hut on Scabb Island and ask that tounge-twister for an amusing conversation with the woodsmith; or beg the men of low moral fiber just for a bucket; or rattle the garbage can outside a mansion's kitchen to make the chef come out, and run around the house while the chef curses at me. I just can't wait to hear what the dialogue sounds like in the Special Edition of the game.

There are a lot of hand-painted backgrounds, causing the graphics to be rich and colorful than those in the first game. In my opinion, most of the stunning backgrounds are found on Phatt Island.

The Bad
For such a great game, the ending just doesn't seem make any sense.

The Bottom Line
Monkey Island 2 is a great game that every MI fan should play every once in a while. It is much longer than the first one, and there is a lot of humor added to the mix. An easy version of the game can e played by beginners if they want to skip the puzzles, but they would me missing out on the best aspects of the game. I enjoyed listening to the reggae tunes that make up the background music. Monkey Island 2 worked beautiful on my P4/1.8G, no timer-related issue or no crashes. There was no need to use DOSBox or some slowdown program. Unfortunately as I upgraded my machine, running without emulation software became more irrelevant.

The Good
Unfortunately, it's difficult to speak highly of this game, without comparing it to numerous other games.

The graphics, sound, and gameplay of this game were all top-notch. The same LucasArts humor is here, but as an "adventure game", it's far above all of their other products.

Nearly every other LucasArts adventure game (Secret of Monkey Island, and Curse of Monkey Island, and Full Throttle, and Sam and Max, and so on) suffered from what I consider to be one huge flaw -- all of these games had a lot of unnecessary "filler" material, that detracted from the actual adventure. For example, in the other two Monkey Island games, you had to spend a large amount of time dicking around with "insult sword-fighting". While it was amusing, at first, it would get old very quickly.

In Full Throttle, you had to spend a bunch of time driving around mountain roads, fighting other bikers. I can't even remember what the purpose of that exercise was, aside from stretching out playtime.

More often than not, I found myself wanting these non-game sequences to be over with, so I could continue following the game's main story.

Monkey Island 2 has none of this kind of "filler" material - it's all story, baby!. Sure, it has its share of inventory puzzles, but for the most part, they all made sense.

The game world also seemed a lot "bigger" than the other games in the Monkey Island series, and it was fairly non-linear. If you're stuck on one particular island, for example, you could take a break and go to another island and fiddle around with the puzzles there for a while.

The Bad
Well... there were one or two maze puzzles that seemed a bit haphazard and slapped together... but those could've been a lot worse.

The Bottom Line
This is, in my opinion, one of the best adventure games ever to be released by LucasArts (and certainly much better than most Sierra games). It's even good as a stand-alone game. While it's certainly not required to play Monkey Island 1 first to understand what's going on in this game, you'll only miss out on a few in-jokes.