Return to Monkey Island

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Return to Monkey Island, released in 2022 on PC, mobile devices, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This is the sixth game in the long-running series about bright-eyed aspiring pirate Guybrush Threepwood and his rivalry with the ghost pirate Captain LeChuck, and the first completely new game the series has received since 2009’s Tales of Monkey Island.

Return to Monkey Island heavily refers back to earlier games in the series, with this game’s story set within a framework of an older Guybrush telling stories of one of his earlier adventures to his son. Those new to this series won’t be completely left out in the cold, though – the game includes a scrapbook album loosely going over the events of earlier games in the series. Still, the ones who are likely to get the most out of this game are undoubtedly series fans.

It should be mentioned that while the Monkey Island series has changed hands over its history, this installment sees the game back under development by series co-creator Ron Gilbert, with co-creator Dave Grossman assisting, meaning the only missing member of the original trio is Tim Schafer.

In my own opinion, Schafer’s absence is missed here. Don’t get me wrong, Return to Monkey Island is well-written, clever, and has a lot of heart, but I feel like the lack of Schafer’s sharp wit definitely shows here – throughout the game, I found many moments that made me smile, and a rare few that caused me to chuckle, but I never really found anything that had me outright laughing.

At the very least, the voice cast here is all excellent, with Dominic Armato, Alexandra Boyd, and Denny Delk reprising their roles as Guybrush, Elaine, and Murray, and all in fine form as their beloved characters. The only one missing here is Earl Boen’s LeChuck, with his voice replaced by veteran voice actor Jess Harnell, whose performance sounds more like what we saw in Tales of Monkey Island from Adam Harrington’s take on the character. At the very least, the game’s soundtrack sounds good, though I can’t say it struck me as terribly memorable. Oh, and as a side note, I noticed the audio occasionally skipping and replaying multiple times, which was both odd and distracting.

And then we get to the visuals, and there’s no way around it, but they won’t be for everyone… so much so that when it was announced, people harassed and threatened this game’s creators. As an aside, let me just say… don’t do that. Even if a game creator makes an artistic choice you don’t agree with… wow, I wasn’t even trying to make that sound petty, and it sounded really petty. Anyway, yeah, if you attack or threaten a game creator over something like an art style, you seriously need to reexamine your life, because normal people don’t act like that.

Now, having said that… I don’t like this game’s art style. Of course, the series has shifted through various art styles over the years in 2D and 3D, but this game’s use of simple 2D visuals animated in a “paper doll” style with a few subtle 3D elements is something that, in my opinion, looks cheap and lacks the sort of creative flair this series has come to be known for. I’m not going to send hate mail to the game’s creators over it, but I dislike it all the same.

Finally, when it comes to the gameplay, this Return to Monkey Island is fairly typical for the genre. Look for items, find ways to use said items to solve puzzles, and make choices in dialogue trees. This game scores points for its use of an in-game hint book to help struggling players, but it loses points by having gameplay choices you can’t undo, sometimes without warning before you make those choices. Also, it’s really frustrating how the circles highlighting interactive elements in the background fade after a brief moment of not touching the controller, which means that if you have multiple items in close proximity you want to look at, each with long descriptions, you’ll be forced to “jiggle” an analog stick to get these options to show after you’re done reading so you can properly select the next one.

In the end, there’s a lot to like in Return to Monkey Island. The characters are still great and the writing is still quite good, and backed up by solid voice acting. But at the same time, the art style won’t appeal to everyone, the writing lacks strong humor, and the game overall suffers from problems due to lack of polish. If you’re a fan of the genre and especially if you like the Monkey Island series, this game is a no-brainer, but it’s hardly the great return to form this series truly needed after being dormant for 13 years.

tl;dr – Return to Monkey Island is a Graphic Adventure that follows pirate Guybrush Threepwood as he attempts to… er… return to Monkey Island. The characters and writing here are top-notch, and series fans will likely enjoy this game, but the humor isn’t as funny as I’d hope for, the graphical style is not something everyone will appreciate, and the game is overall lacking in polish. There’s still a lot to like here, but not without some major flaws too.

Grade: B

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