Review: Return to Monkey Island is a must-have for point-and-click brilliance

Expand / This is the second biggest title screen I've ever seen! Terrible Toybox / Lucasfilm Games

For a certain type of adventure game fan, no sentence is harder to hear than this: "I learned the secret of Monkey Island before you did." But now I can say it. I played, finished, and fell in love with Return to Monkey Island, a sequel that's been in the works for over three decades. It's a game full of laughter, fantasy, and puzzles as carefully constructed as the stories that surround them.

But I'm not here to spoil your next pirate fun. I've been writing reviews long enough to remember how nice it was to read about a new video game before playing it for a single minute. That's how we did things while saving enough money to get our own boxed copies of old Monkey Island games, then cracking them open and solving their protection puzzles. copy Dial-a-Pirate.

The return to Monkey Island is almost everything I hoped for in a modern return to the series. Its interface and controls split the difference between the expectations of hardcore genre fans and those of point-and-click novices. Its presentation and voice acting blend well to set an approachable and devilishly hilarious tone. And the game's entire journey, from bumpy waters to smooth, silly navigation, still feels personal, vulnerable, and reflective of its creators, which is to say, it's the opposite of a nostalgia-tinged cash-in. /p> More accessibility, fewer verbs

Enlarge / I guess the question in this screenshot is important to the adventure we're all about to embark on. Terrible Toybox / Lucasfilm Games

I'd like to start not by spoiling the plot of the game (you're safe here!) but by applauding the clever refresh of point-and-click adventure by RtMI concept . Indeed, this game offers some of the best things the genre has seen in years.

As the title of the game suggests, players return to Monkey Island. The setting and characters are familiar, with budding pirate Guybrush Threepwood insisting he has unfinished business on the titular island, and much of what he does resembles the first games in the series: Solve puzzles, choose from light dialogue options, and choose between jokes to find helpful clues for the next objective.

Like other point-and-click classics, RtMI on PC supports using a mouse to do just about anything. Click on the ground to move Threepwood. Click to talk to people you see. Click to examine or pick up items (as long as Threepwood can get close). Click again to go through an inventory of things you've found, then click some more to combine those items in clever ways or use those items on things around you. Classic example: find a key, walk to a door and use the key on the door. Why, you are a true unlocking master!

Unlike earlier episodes of the series, RtMI ignores the dated "verb" interface. Instead of having to specify that you want to "look at", "use" or "talk to" something in-game, you now get an automatic verb suggestion or two while hovering over anything. Most modern adventure games have gone this route, so it's no surprise to see it here, and the results feel quite natural and comfortable.