The Trouble with Monkey Island

Some of you may remember a popular computer game during the early 1990s called The Secret of Monkey Island. The game was created by visionary Ron Gilbert, and combined puzzles, humor, and pirates into a compelling adventure game. It became a successful franchise until the FPSs and MMORPGs seemed to drain the public's desire (or more likely, the producers' checkbooks) for witty adventure puzzle games. Undaunted however, Gilbert has returned with a new episodic Monkey Island game and a revamped version of the one that started it all.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition features completely updated graphics and sound, including the addition of voice actors for the characters. Dominic Armato leads the way as our hero Guybrush Threepwood, reprising his role from the 3rd and 4th games. Previous versions of the original game used text rather than actual voices.

As an added treat, this updated version of the original game has been made available on the iPhone/iPod touch platform. If you're like me and spent countless hours trying to figure out how to open the gate to the Giant Monkey Head, you probably won't bat an eye at the $7.99 price tag. After all, this game is a classic.

The iPhone is an amazing device, and the operating system is nothing short of stunning. It has created an incredibly high bar for developers to reach for their applications, and for the most part we've been treated to an extremely high standard of applications; certainly higher than what was available prior to its release.

But this means that our expectations are similarly raised, and an application that fails to meet those expectations stands out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately, this is the case with The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition iPhone port.

The game itself offers some pretty cool features, the most impressive of which is the ability to switch from the Special Edition to the Classic Edition anytime during gameplay–even during a cut scene.

Top: the special edition graphics. Bottom: original graphics.

The overall gameplay is lacking however, primarily because the game still requires the use of a cursor-like controller. Rather than tapping on items to interact with them as you would expect, you're required to move your finger around the screen which operates the cursor, then tap to execute the action. Here's an example.

One of the biggest breakthroughs of the iPhone is the multi-touch screen, which has obliterated the need for a cursor. Why should I have to scroll a white glowing ball up and down to move an arrow to select objects when I can just touch them directly with my finger?

This crutch is mostly just a nuisance, but there are times where the actual gameplay is significantly impeded. For instance, obtaining the red herring and transferring the mug of grog become much harder than they should be.

I'm sure that the team responsible for this effort spent a lot of time on this, and I wonder whether LucasArts will even turn a profit on it. The game is certainly a technical achievement, but it's very clearly not the best it could, or should be.

Despite the brilliance of the game itself, playing on the iPhone it is a constant reminder of the ways in which the interface does not do it justice. Whether the blame lies with the developers themselves or with LucasArts I don't know, but I wish their standards were higher.

I still enjoyed playing the game for the nostalgia, but I can't help but think that the gameplay alone would turn off any would-be addicts to the franchise. The puzzles that Ron Gilbert and team devised are supposed to be frustrating and somewhat diabolical. The user interface is not.

I really hope we get to see an iPhone version of Monkey Island 2 (my personal favorite), but this time with a proper interface that's more befitting of the iPhone, and the game.