Gameology 2.0

Review Of

Gilbert, Ron. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. San Francisco, CA: LucasArts, 1991.

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LucasArt's classic graphical adventure game, Secret of Monkey Island, released in 1990, remains on many GAG fans top ten list of GAGs. The game's sharp wit, high playability, zany story, and clever puzzles made it the most enjoyable GAG of its time. It seemed to be a perfection of so many trends began in Maniac Mansion and Zak McCraken and the Alien Mindbenders. The game was a big hit across platforms (I remember reading glowing contemporary reviews of the game in Amiga World, and it's aged very well. Indeed, the game's miramba and steel drum sound tracks are some of the most frequently requested tunes tracks on internet radio stations Kohina and Nectarine.

Naturally, LucasArts wanted to follow up with a sequel, which appeared a year later: LeChuck's Revenge. While not as popular as its predecessor, the first sequel nevertheless appears on several top lists of adventure games, such as this one from Adventure Gamers, which lists the game at 18 (the first game is ranked at #2). Of course, making sequels is a difficult business--it's hard enough just to be "as good as" a famous predecessor, much less do better. To its credit, LeChuck's Revenge doesn't monkey with a good thing. There is very little difference between part I and II of Monkey Island in terms of interface or technology, as we might expect given the short period between the releases. To put it simply, if you liked The Secret of Monkey Island, you'll find much to like here, as well. However, I may as well admit it: It's not quite as good. I'm hoping that the third game can do a bit better.

What's most intruiging to me about LeChuck's Revenge is its experimentation with narrative. The narrative setup is established at the beginning--your avatar is dangling above a pit, one hand clutching a rope, the other a chest. The dashing Elaine, who you apparently became romantically involved with in the first game, comes to rescue you--but there's obviously been some friction in the relationship. Your avatar begins to explain how he ended up in this predicament, and this "fades" into the game proper. Towards the end of the game there is a "cutscene" back to the predicament, but, alas, the ending abandons this narrative strategy altogether.

Other story-telling techniques here are brief and humorous cut-scenes that occur after critical moments of the gameplay (such as when the avatar locates one of four map pieces). The cut scenes are well-managed and interesting, and help to add relevance and tension. While I'd stop short of using the word "dramatic" here, I never felt at a loss about what I was trying to accomplish and why.

Dialogue is menu-based and always humorous. Part of the joy of these games is reading the unexpected and out-of-character dialogue options given the avatar. For instance, the player often gets the chance to taunt people or complain, even about the cost of purchasing adventure games. At times I really felt as though I was directing a cartoon.

The game is also loaded with self-references and, for lack of a better term, allusions to things the characters in the game world couldn't possibily know about. Lucas Arts logos are sprinkled throughout, as are references to the first Monkey Island, Sam and Max, Fred Flintstone, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars. While I was lost in a jungle, I found a phone that would my avatar could use to dial the official Lucas Arts 1-900 hint line. A little bubble opened on the screen representing the operator (an effect I've seen often on television), who provided no hints, but plenty of insults, even going so far as to call me a knucklehead!

Another interesting narrative twist occurs when the avatar is trapped by LeChuck. The chain holding him above a vat of boiling goo snaps, and for a moment it looks like it's game over. Yet, soon the scene from the beginning of the game appears, and Elaine reminds the avatar (who had been telling the story) that he obviously didn't die in the pit; otherwise, how could he be telling the story? It's a clever trick to get around the immortality of the player. The gameplay resumes, and hopefully before too many iterations of this, the player will discover how to break out of the cycle. I've seen such breaks in narrative often enough in cartoons, where I suppose Gilbert drew much of his influence. Something similar occurs in Sam and Max Hit the Road when Sam asks a wishing well to make the game end.

The biggest problem I have with the sequel is the rather steep difficulty level of some of its puzzles. I had to consult a hint site several times, which I never had to do with the first game. Gilbert obviously has broken many of the rules in his essay Why Adventure Games Suck. Shame. There is also some significant backtracking here--at some points, I began to feel that annoyance that comes when I realize a developer is dragging a game out just to do it. Thankfully, there aren't that many locations, and travel is swift (though I wouldn't want to play this on floppies!). Adding to the difficulty is the ability to carry most of your inventory from chapter to chapter. In the first game, your character's inventory was automatically cleared of items that wouldn't be useful when you entered a new chapter. In this game, you keep almost all of your items (it seems rather arbitrary, really, what you lose and keep). You end up with quite a few "red herrings," which add to the frustration when stuck in trial-and-error mode. This is particularly a problem in the antique shop, where you can buy up all kinds of useless junk. I'd have much rather been limited to just those items I could actually use; or at least had them purged when I went to the next chapter.

There's also a problem with pacing--specifically, the length of the chapters. Chapter 1 is fairly long, but Chapter 2 is far longer and more involved than Chapters 3 and 4, which fly by. The brevity of the latter chapters gives the game a "rushed" feel--which is amplified tremendously by the ending, which really seems to come out of nowhere.

I know what reviewers were talking about when they said that the sequel to The Secret of Monkey Island had a wacky ending. I haven't played the third installment yet, so I'm very interested to see how the developers are going to advance the story after the ending of part 2. It surely must have been agonizing to play this game back in 1991, six years before part 3. All that time, many players probably thought Gilbert's famous series was over. My guess is that Gilbert had no intention of making a third game, and this was meant to be "it." But enough of that. I can't really discuss the issue without giving away the ending.