Review: Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Reviewed by Douglas Kiang

Type:
Graphic Adventure
Publisher: LucasArts Games (415) 721-3300
Retail Price: $59.95
Mail Order:
$37.00
Requires:
Mac LC or better, 2 MB RAM, System 6.0.7 or higher, 8-bit color
Protection:
One-time code-wheel lookup question.

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of . . . Near-Grog? Okay, so you’re Guybrush Threepwood—a big, bad pirate, having triumphed over the Ghost Pirate LeChuck in the original Monkey Island. But somehow LeChuck’s minions have managed to reincarnate him from a scrap of his beard, he’s back from the grave and determined to seek revenge on you at all costs, and you can’t even convince the bartender you’re old enough to drink alcoholic grog. And in spite of all this, you’re hunting for the fabled treasure of Big Whoop, the biggest treasure of the century, and trying to get reunited with the beautiful Governor Marley. What’s a poor pirate to do?

LeChuck’s Revenge’s physical requirements are heavy; the game itself takes up nearly six megabytes on your drive, and each saved game consumes nearly 50K. You must have a color Mac (although you probably wouldn’t want to play it in black and white anyway; the color artwork is very well done). In addition, the sound requirements are such that the game requires system 6.0.7 or above. 

Once LeChuck’s Revenge is installed, the “voodoo-matic” wheel starts up and you have three tries to match the correct cure with the symbol to match such cures as “peg-leg rot” and “whatever.” After you’ve entered the correct symbol (the code protection won’t show up again unless you move the application), you have to choose between two different modes of gameplay: Monkey Island Lite, which is less complex and presents puzzles that are much less complicated to solve, and Monkey Island 2 (the full version), which follows the complete storyline and contains some very tough puzzles indeed. The “Lite” feature allows younger players or those newer to adventure games a chance to experience Monkey Island at a level that is a bit simpler and more straightforward, and contains all of the off-the-wall humor and bad puns as the full version does. However, because both modes follow the same storyline, once you've played one it will probably take much of the challenge out of the other.

The game window consists of an inventory window, in which you can select among a variety of items and actions, and the view window, in which you can interact with various objects around you. This particular interface makes it very easy to control your character, but at the same time a good portion of your screen is taken up by a static display of commands that can just as easily be controlled through the keyboard. You can select from a large, medium or small window (on slower Macs, a smaller window will speed up gameplay) but even the largest window is only about 320x200, roughly half of my 14” color monitor. As you fill up your inventory, you must click on the scroll arrows to access the other items. However, unlike in the original Monkey Island, many of the items don’t disappear from your inventory as you use them, so that near the end of the game, you find yourself scrolling through a seemingly endless assortment of items you have already used to get to the one you want. One option that would be nice to have would be a sack in which you could store items you don’t currently need; as it is now, each and every item you pick up is displayed in its own window, and this takes up a lot of space.

In true adventure-game fashion, many of the puzzles involve traveling back and forth between different islands in order to collect various objects you will need to solve different puzzles. However, after awhile this can become quite tedious, because the way the puzzles are constructed makes you do a lot of backtracking through territory you have already seen. Throughout the game, however, the zany sense of humor as well as the weird and wacky objects you find do keep the action from dragging too much. When you converse with characters, you are presented with lines of dialogue, some of them quite funny and littered with bad puns and references to all sorts of things from George Lucas movies to the original Monkey Island to other LucasFilm games. In the general store on Booty Island, for example, if you look carefully you can even see tucked away in a dusty corner a coil of leather labeled “Indy’s Whip” (try to buy it from the storekeeper!). 

The musical soundtrack for LeChuck’s Revenge uses the Macintosh’s sound capabilities to their fullest potential. Unlike many adventure games, even though the music plays constantly in the background, it rarely becomes boring or repetitive. The music changes from scene to scene, and even changes in response to your actions. The result is an almost interactive musical flow that is unique and original. LeChuck’s Revenge has a varied and diverse set of characters, ranging from the Jamaican sea captain to the crusty old barkeep to the beautiful Governor Elaine. In true operatic fashion, the music changes to fit each of these characters, working in separate themes for each. On the houseboat, you hear reggae music flowing out of your speakers, and in the bar you hear wonderful piano tunes by Jojo the piano-playing monkey. In combination with the hundreds of individually painted scenes and backgrounds, the result is entirely captivating. 

A Pirate’s Life For Me. In the full version of LeChuck’s Revenge, sometimes you will need to do mean and even cruel things in order to succeed as a pirate. In one scene, you need to steal a monacle from an adorable character named Wally and keep it, even as he pleads with you to give it back. “I need my monocle—I can’t work without it!” he begs. But in order to complete the next scene, you have to resist any impulse to return it as he fumbles helplessly around on his desk for the monocle. “I’ll starve and die without it,” he pleads as you exit the room. In order to get a job in the bar, you have to frame the cook so they will fire him and hire you. Another scene involves sawing off someone’s wooden leg. In yet another scene, the only way to win a certain contest is to cheat. Granted, Guybrush is a pirate, yet in the end these solutions seem to conflict on the most basic level with the harmless, lighthearted spirit of the rest of the game. At the very least, there should be other ways to accomplish some of your goals. 

The option to choose a mode of gameplay at the start is a good one, but unfortunately your choice at the start of the game, when you haven’t even had a chance to work through any of the puzzles, determines from the very start the difficulty of the rest of the game (you cannot switch between modes once the game has begun.) There are, perhaps, subtler ways of doing this; a good example of this is, ironically, another LucasFilm game. In Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the way you choose to solve certain problems (using your fists, your brains, or team cooperation) determines the flow of the rest of the game. If LeChuck’s Revenge could adapt its difficulty level depending on how you are solving the puzzles, it would make the game much more versatile. 

The game interface is also not as smoothly designed as it could be. There are some scenes in which the icon bar disappears and you are unable to choose from your inventory—you need to exit and come back in to gain access to your items. In addition, throughout the course of the game you find several books that you need to consult frequently in order to overcome various obstacles. However, when you select “Use Book,” the contents of the book appear over your head like lines of dialogue, one phrase at a time. This can be very frustrating when you are referring back to a section near the end of the book, as you have to read through all the other sections just to get to the right section. If the entire book were put up on screen, with all of the text arranged on pages, it would be much easier to find what you are looking for than by having to plod through one line at a time.

LeSummary. Overall, LeChuck’s Revenge just doesn’t live up to the original. The music and artwork is splendid, but the game suffers most from the lack of a coherent storyline. The original Monkey Island had a clear progression of puzzles to solve: you did everything you could on one island, then went on to the next. There were different ways to solve each of the puzzles, however, so you didn’t feel locked into the storyline. LeChuck’s Revenge seems to have sacrificed variety for ambiguity: there is only one way to solve most of the puzzles, and there is no set progression of tasks, so you spend a lot of time wandering around getting frustrated. You have so many goals to accomplish it’s difficult to decide what to do and when. The interface could use some polishing up in spots, and some of the puzzles really become more tedious than entertaining. 

In addition, the ways in which many of the puzzles must be solved, although perhaps immediately obvious to other pirates out there, are really not so natural for some of us honest landlubbers, and especially younger children. In any case, of what value is a game that shows that in order to overcome a certain obstacle, you have to cheat? The “Lite” version of LeChuck’s Revenge does offer kinder, gentler solutions that don’t involve cheating or hurting other characters and is much more in keeping with the harmless tone of the original Monkey Island; it also takes much of the tedium out of certain intractable puzzles by simply skipping them. But at the same time, you don’t get to see some of the scenes and artwork that were designed for the game. In the end, the most entertaining version of LeChuck’s Revenge (the “Lite” version) is probably too easy for veteran adventure game players, yet the Full Version lacks a strong storyline to string together all of the tasks you must complete, making certain parts of it more tedious than entertaining. Compared with most other adventure games, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge is quite well done and entertaining as a whole. But any sequel to Monkey Island has big shoes to step into. Although the graphics and soundtrack are truly outstanding, surpassing even the original, in the end the open-ended storyline is more of a disadvantage than a strength.

Pros:
• Beautiful 256-color graphics and original soundtrack
• Friendly, intuitive interface
• Great sense of humor
• Code-wheel copy protection only necessary once

Cons:
• Saved games take up a lot of room
• Some interface problems
• Only way to solve some puzzles is to cheat
• Weak storyline, open-ended plot