The Secret of Monkey Island (1990)

 

So I didn't have a PC in 1990 when The Secret of Monkey Island came out.  I only know it by reputation, and what a reputation it has.  Much beloved to this day, with another sequel just announced.

I... well I didn't like it all that much.  I didn't hate it either though.

I'm inclined to think it's me.  I'm old now, and the humor didn't really land with me much.  Some wry amusement when I could tell they were trying to be funny.  But no audible chuckling.  Although it's always possible I wasn't creative, or persistent enough to bang my head up against the really obscure interactions that drag out the best jokes.  That happens sometimes.

I got more or less all the puzzles in Part 1, but subsequent parts left me totally stumped at key impasses more often than not.  Many times I would try a solution and it wouldn't work.  So I'd go off on some wild goose chase, then give up.  Checking a hint page, it would tell me to do the thing I tried in the first place, only this time it would work.  Happened with the solution to getting a certain bottle of grog in Part III.

I went through some old issues of Computer Gaming World, and Scorpia felt the game was rather easy.  But she was CGW's professional hintmeister.  I did notice in many issues after her hint guide, users were stumped and asking for more hints on many of the places I got stuck as well.  I wonder just how long people beat their head against this game back in the day?  Thinking back to my own childhood, slowly unwinding everything Quest for Glory had to offer was an entire summer.  Perhaps I should have had more patience.

The environments felt rather sparse to me.  Maybe I need to consider more the time this came out.  But each screen had so little to examine or interact with.  Some screens felt entirely too perfunctory, like the church on Melee Island, or inside the circus tent.  I played Day of the Tentacle not that long ago, and don't remember feeling that way at all.

I at least solved the final puzzle on my own.  I know I probably ruined the experience for myself, falling back on hints too easily in the latter half of the game.  But then again, when I looked up the solution, I knew immediately it was something I never would have gotten on my own.  Like talking to inventory objects.

I remember once upon a time, when I was first figuring out Zork: Grand Inquisitor, things suddenly clicked with me.  I realized the game had it's own internally consistent puzzle logic, and magically I was firing on all cylinders, solving puzzles left and right.  I don't know if Monkey Island has that, and I just never got it, or if it's puzzle solutions were truly so idiosyncratic and one off that there is no "Monkey Island Logic" groove to be found.

Overall I'm left feeling rather neutral about the game.  Insult Sword Fighting lived up to it's reputation.  The characters were fun too.  But the world and gameplay wound up feeling very blah to me.  It's probably good that I played the game, but I'm just left wondering how I missed what everyone else loves so much about it.