From: Jarno Kokko Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Jason L. Tibbitts III Subject: REVIEW: Monkey Island II Keywords: game, adventure, graphical, commercial Path: karazm.math.uh.edu!amiga-reviews Distribution: world Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Reply-To: Jarno Kokko Monkey Island 2 is a massive icon driven graphical adventure. And again a little review from Jarnis(tm) - This time its M O N K E Y I S L A N D 2 - L E C H U C K ' S R E V E N G E Publisher: Lucasfilm Games Formats: Amiga (reviewed here) PC (Has been out before, is better than this) Price: Not sure, maybe 29.95 UK pounds. Out Now. Requires: 1 MB ram. More recommended. Massive *11* disk game. Naturally fully HD installable. Monkey Island 2 is a massive icon driven graphical adventure. Idea goes something like this: After Monkey Island 1, Guybrush Threepwood had defeated the evil pirate LeChuck and everything was just fine. In the beginning of Monkey Island 2, Guybrush is stuck in the Scabb-island, which is just about the worst place in the universe. Evil guy named Largo LaGrande (Pal of the LeChuck, by the way) is controlling the whole island with a true Mafia-style, ripping people off all the time, etc. Also all the pirate friends of our hero have totally fed up hearing his stories about how he defeated the horrible pirate LeChuck. In other words, life sucks. Guybrush Threepwood decides to seek for the legendary treasure called 'Big Whoop' - and it's time for another adventure again! First impressions: (note, I first loaded this game from floppies, which is *NOT* recommended. Non-HD users should have at least 3 floppy drives and LOTS of patience.) This game really has loads of disk access, and the animation is a bit slow on basic A500. But it's not so important on an adventure game anyway. Graphics is damn close to the VGA originals, and it's VERY VERY WELL drawn with 32 colours. You can tell the difference between PC's 256 colour mode and Amiga 32 colours, but the difference doesn't affect the game anyway. Graphics are truly lot better than I feared. Music is very well done, when it's playing - shame that quite large areas of the game has no background tune at all! Scrolling of the screen is done better than on PC, but it's still a bit jerky. Overall the game looks very good. Maybe bit slow, but still very good. Good points: The adventure itself is the same as on PC - meaning it's MEGA! Not too hard, but not too easy either, and it will keep you hooked for days. The adventure system (SCUMM) is also just as good as on PC. All the great jokes are there, and you will have lots of laughs while playing. Only Space Quest series had better jokes. Graphics is VERY well done considering we're talking about 32 colours. Music - whenever anything is playing - is good. Gameplay is bit too slow on an A500, but A500 and a hard disk will make it easily playable, and I suspect it's excellent on accelerated Amigas. Bad points: HORRIBLE amounts of disk access if played from floppies. Floppy users - FORGET THIS GAME until you buy a HD. Music stops during floppy access. (HD users will have no problems with this.) Too few tunes - only few of the tunes that played on the background on PC are there. Too large areas of the game are just silent. Graphics: 9 Sound: 7 Value: 8 Playability: 8 / 4 (HD/Floppy) Summary: A good graphical adventure, that is much more playable than the new sierras. Very well coded. Will keep you hooked for many days, maybe even weeks. Cries for HD. Adventurers GO OUT AND BUY IT! ____________ _| .signature |______________________________________________________ | | | -------- Jarno Kokko -------- | Borg: Prepare to be assimilated | | --- jarnis@mits.mdata.fi -- | by the Borg. | | ---- Vantaa, Finland ---- | Worf: Prepare to eat phasers. | |_____________________________________________________________________|