So I’ve been playing the Monkey Island special edition a bit. It’s a very close remake – puzzles, dialogue and location all exactly the same. In fact even it’s even closer than that; it feels like the original game re-skinned, matching the animation frame-for-frame. You can even flick between the old and new versions of the graphics on the fly.
This approach does lead to some oddities though. Like, Guybrush has about four frames to his walking animation. Also no-one’s facial expression ever changes, and people bob their heads around while talking in that way that conveyed liveliness in 1991 but would look really weird in real life.
Maybe i’m being picky here – it was probably necessary for the graphics switching. And the new artwork is itself great, moonlit melee island is as atmospheric as ever in high-def. It just feels a bit disappointing in motion – I think i had just been hoping for the fluid style of Monkey 3, The Dig, Broken Sword etc.
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I guess there’s an argument about it being a ‘special edition’ rather than a remake; ie, if they tinkered too much purists would get annoyed.
Plus, there’s the fact that this is pretty much the only legitimate way to get and play the original MI as well, so I guess they need to include the ‘old’ graphics in case people want to play as originally intended.
Not bought it myself, though.
August 10, 2009 @ 12:13 pm