Just for funsies, and because I don't do reviews any more, a few cool adventure design things I noted down while playing #ReturnToMonkeyIsland. No spoilers, promise. Just noting some things that I especially dug.
Puzzles are so well signposted, and in multiple ways. You've got the To-Do list as a reminder, but also, character dialogue trees typically leave in a reference to the puzzle they're part of, making it easy to strip the branches and dismiss red herrings or pointless components.
Puzzles are constantly building on each other, to the point that points of repetition feel both earned and like a natural progression - the one major exception being a genuinely wonderful meta-joke I won't name, but which I thought was a fantastic bit of adventure legerdemain.
Even before all of that, the tutorial section packs more character and charm than some entire games, in a way that feels a lot like it harkens back to the old Humungous kids games that had to hook the audience immediately or lose them forever. The particular genius of it is that
The puzzles hit what I think of as the 'Aha!' level, which is where you get to feel smart about solving things versus 'that was a waste of my time'. Much of that comes from the re-use of scenes and themes, so that they feel like earned knowledge rather than obvious actions.
At the same time, just when you start to roll your eyes at 'oh, god, this again', the game will throw an interesting twist on it that forces you to think differently again, and even subvert the method that you used the last time.
The pace of the game means that you're rarely far from both seeing something new, and the *promise* of seeing something new. By the time you return to terra cognita, you're already being teased with how much you haven't seen yet - and the game very quickly delivers on that.
At the same time, there's no wasted space. Act 2 in particular is a masterpiece of minimalist design - packing a *lot* into just a few screens, and still finding the time to seed things that won't pay off until much, much later. This might be a *slightly* spoilery pun. Ignore it.
The whole game mixes up scope and pace in fascinating ways - open and freeform, constricted and focused, etc. Structurally, it's almost the reverse of Monkey Island 2, where you get your pudding early (Four Map Pieces) and then the game somewhat runs out of steam. Mixed metaphor!
That goes for the storytelling too. Every chapter changes gear in some way, or adds a new Thing that adds a new flavour to the pot while it lasts, while still looping back. The result is that it feels like it constantly builds instead of going on auto-pilot.
I'd give a lot more in terms of specific bits, but like I said, avoiding spoilers because a) it's too early for that, and b) people who post spoilers with just a SPOILER WARNING tag are going to the Bad Place to beta-test the acid wasps. You know who you are.
Now, does that mean I think the game is perfect or anything? Nope. I absolutely have quibbles and some Thoughts. But the nice thing about not having to write reviews is that I get to talk about just the stuff that I want to, and in this case, that's the good stuff.
Ultimately, while Return isn't the incredible ground-breaker game of Maniac Mansion and the original SOMI, the main thing that truly makes it feel like a worthy sequel is that it does the same thing that those games did, way back in the 80s/early 90s.
By that, I mean it comes to the genre with a scalpel and goes "What actually matters here?" It *ruthlessly* goes to town on adventure game frustrations and irritations that have been codified over the years, much like constant death/dead-man-walking was back in the dark ages.
It's a game that balances a deep, forensic understanding of the genre with an uncommonly wide view of how it stacks up against the others, and how elements like frustration and trudging around are not in fact part of the fun, but a set of vestigial organs that mostly ooze pus.
It is, bluntly, a game designed by masters of the craft. Part of that mastery is that everything it does well seems so obvious. Another part is that it seems so easy. But it's not, and it's not, as the rest of the genre has proven for several decades now.
It's not the artistic mastery of the Sistine Chapel. It's the mastery of an artist walking up to a blackboard, picking up the chalk, drawing a *perfect* circle, and then walking away, content that they made their point.
I won't talk about the ending. I have Thoughts, of course. I do think the final chapter could have used a little more 'moreness' to it. But really, I think if the game earns anything, it's being able to end in the way the creators wanted. Assuming that's true, I'm glad they did.
Again, I could say more, but I wanted to avoid anything that might be or could be taken as a spoiler. Forgive the vagueness. But it only seems fair.
But as a whole, Return To Monkey Island really is a special game - not least because, when all is said and done, it's not the titular island that it feels like returning to, but that warm nostalgic bubble before work and taxes and all of that kind of stuff.
It's the adventure game equivalent of getting into a bath that's just the right temperature. A smooth, refreshing experience that acts as a great reminder of why you loved these games back in the day, and why they've survived so, so, so many 'deaths' since then.
I don't know how a lot of it will land if you've never played the original games. I can't detach that knowledge or that nostalgia. So I won't try.
Oh. Also, there is a visual joke involving Stan that made me laugh more than any joke I've heard in months. Not a spoiler. Just had to mention it.
End of file.
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