The Curse of Monkey Island

Gaming's favorite wannabe pirate is back in LucasArts' killer adventure game, The Curse of Monkey Island. Guybrush is back after thwarting his nemisis, the zombie pirate LeChuck last in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge way back in 1992. This time Guybrush decides to ask his sporadic love Elaine Marley to marry him. Except that the ring he gives Elaine is cursed and she is turned into a gold statue. This happens on Plunder Island of all places. And so begins our adventure. This time Guybrush is not full of pixelly goodness, he is in stunning 640x480. this game is in stunning 2D which is fortunate for most of us, but your brand spanking new 3D accelerator is no good here. I could go on for pages on how much I like the graphics, but in a nutshell, they are great! Control is very simple and easy just use the mouse. Some people don't like this amount of control simplicity, but I find it makes the game enjoyable. It brings a new meaning to point-and-click. The puzzles, at times, can be a challenge. The difficulty level determines the difficulty of the puzzles (go figure!). I suggest at first playing through the standard setting and then playing through the Mega- Monkey difficulty setting. If playing through the game twice sounds boring, it's not. Every time you go through you notice something funny that the characters do or something funny happening in the background (I have played through Curse 5 times and I am still finding new stuff). The game uses an enhanced SCUMM engine, which powered such games as The Dig and Full Throttle. This is a welcome title because the genre of adventure gaming was not looking well. Curse of Monkey Island and Blade Runner have given the genre a new birth. Curse lives up to the Monkey Island series high standards and proves itself to be one of the most enjoyable games of the year and possibly of all time.

The Clair

Breakdown (For Key)

Music: Really, really good. Can get slightly repeative, but it is still enjoyable.

Sound: Wow! The sound quality and voice acting is great. The voices fit the mental image most gamers had of the classic characters. Bravo LucasArts.

Graphics: Silky smooth, lack of 3D, and gloriously detailed. What more could you want?

Solo Play: One of the best, funniest story lines I have ever seen in any game. Hell, even the manual is hilarious!

Multiplayer: N/A. If Curse had it, what would it look like to have 14 different Guybrushes on the same screen?

Fun Factor and Longevity: Non stop laughs and you can play through it at different difficulty levels. Sure some parts get old, but other parts are immortal. I never get tired of the banjo dueling and listening to the sound of putting on the Tofu mask.

System Requirements: Not very high. It says a Pentium 90 as minimum, but it will play good on a Pentium 75 or Pentium 66. Plus NO Hard Drive Space (well, next to none!).

Actual Minimum System Requirements:

Pentium 90 (Pentium 133 recommended)

16 meg RAM

4X CD-ROM

1.2 meg Hard Drive Space (an additional 20 meg recommended for multiple save games)

DirectSound compatible Sound Card

Mouse

Keyboard

DirectDraw Compatible PCI Video Card

DirectX 5.0

Windows 95/98

May 1998