MRY
Wormwood Studios
Just finished playing it with the kids. Gotta say, I was underwhelmed. I still think Monkey Island 2 is the greatest of all time -- we'll see if I still feel that way after we play it -- but Secret had some real flaws.
(1) The last portion of the game is much weaker than the first. Monkey Island's puzzles are more or less linear and are mostly worse than Melee Island's puzzles. There are a couple that aren't so bad (like the catapult puzzle), but the overwhelming majority are A-on-B and lack the cleverness or lateral thinking of following the shopkeeper, understanding the treasure map, using the grog, beating the sword master, or getting into the safe.
(2) LeChuck is a neat character, but he's not an adversary. Other than snatching Elaine (which happens off screen) and is totally irrelevant to Guybrush's stated goal at the outset of the game (to become a pirate), he doesn't interact with Guybrush's quest until the very end. While the cannibals have various grievances to air about LeChuck, nothing he does there actually interferes with the player's goals (e.g., LeChuck has stolen the voodoo root, but you only learn of the voodoo root in the same conversation when you learn LeChuck has it).
(3) There is lots of tedious backtracking, particularly late in the game, and while thankfully they finally lampshade it and avert it with the fifth time you have to schlep to the cannibal tribe, that "joke" doesn't really merit the tedium leading up to it.
(4) Insult sword fighting was kind of good when I was a kid and not good at all now. Humor is hard, but the problem isn't actually the humor. It's that you have to grind for so damn long doing the same thing over and over again, such that any joke would wear out its welcome. The way the insults switch at the end is great, but the rest is pretty much classic bad puzzle design where the time it takes the player to figure out what to do is trivial compared to the time it takes him to mechanically do the thing. There are many other examples of puzzles that go on too long, in particular the two mazes, which each could be half as long and no less difficult or prone to luck. A few puzzles are just dumb (like the magnetic compass on the key), while others are stupidly easy and feel like padding (essentially everything on the ghost ship) -- you know exactly what to use an item one once you get it, and you get the item without even knowing it's there (the grease is a good example of this).
(5) There were several times in the game where I got way ahead of the logic. For example, the monkey was following me before I had any idea that I needed his help, I hit the tree with the boulder without knowing I needed bananas, most of the items I took I had no reason for taking. I went through many steps to get the oars, but I didn't really know what I was getting the oars for -- to row the boat, obviously, but to where? Lots of this "because it's there" stuff. (Indeed, the ghost ship is again a good example.)
(6) A big part of the game's "humor" is the idea that Guybrush goes through a huge undertaking and it's totally worthless. He completes the trials but nothing comes of it; he gathers the crew and the crew does nothing; Toothrot had a ship all along; he "rescues" Elaine and she didn't need rescuing; he gets the voodoo rootbeer and it's promptly lost. The thing is, whatever the merits of this from the standpoint of humor, it undercuts the player's sense of accomplishment and when it connects with #4, it makes the whole game feel kind of unengaging -- the things you try to do come to nothing, while the things you do unknowingly yield some result. Grim Fandango has basically the same structure except that Manny isn't a failure at everything he does, and IMO it works much better.
(7) In several instances, important hotspots are inexplicably hard to find, even when they aren't meant to be hidden. The most obvious of these is the hatch on the ship in the second part of the game. (That section also had the annoying fact that the rope ladder had to be interacted with using "walk to" not "use." Oh well.) I am not opposed to hiding hotspots. For one thing, they can encourage the player to more closely study the scene (which can itself reveal fun visual details). For another, where you're trying to convey that an item is hidden among others, small hotposts achieve mimesis. But that really didn't seem to be how the hard-to-find hotspots worked in MI. (The one "justifiable" hidden hotspot might be Herman's fort.)
A few other observations:
(1) I'd forgotten that the end of MI1 was so similar to the end of MI2.
(2) The sequence inside the wall in Elaine's manor is really funny and clever. There were a couple other similarly clever parts. A few of the puzzles are really great (most of them mentioned above).
(3) I was shocked to see that Sam & Max were among the idols at the monkey head. Apparently the Lucas guys were fans of the comic strip long before Hit the Road was made.
I mean, the game is still a bajillion times better than almost every other adventure game (certainly including Primordia), in part because it does have a good number of very clever puzzles, but it feels more like a proof of concept of the greatness that MI2 achieved.
(1) The last portion of the game is much weaker than the first. Monkey Island's puzzles are more or less linear and are mostly worse than Melee Island's puzzles. There are a couple that aren't so bad (like the catapult puzzle), but the overwhelming majority are A-on-B and lack the cleverness or lateral thinking of following the shopkeeper, understanding the treasure map, using the grog, beating the sword master, or getting into the safe.
(2) LeChuck is a neat character, but he's not an adversary. Other than snatching Elaine (which happens off screen) and is totally irrelevant to Guybrush's stated goal at the outset of the game (to become a pirate), he doesn't interact with Guybrush's quest until the very end. While the cannibals have various grievances to air about LeChuck, nothing he does there actually interferes with the player's goals (e.g., LeChuck has stolen the voodoo root, but you only learn of the voodoo root in the same conversation when you learn LeChuck has it).
(3) There is lots of tedious backtracking, particularly late in the game, and while thankfully they finally lampshade it and avert it with the fifth time you have to schlep to the cannibal tribe, that "joke" doesn't really merit the tedium leading up to it.
(4) Insult sword fighting was kind of good when I was a kid and not good at all now. Humor is hard, but the problem isn't actually the humor. It's that you have to grind for so damn long doing the same thing over and over again, such that any joke would wear out its welcome. The way the insults switch at the end is great, but the rest is pretty much classic bad puzzle design where the time it takes the player to figure out what to do is trivial compared to the time it takes him to mechanically do the thing. There are many other examples of puzzles that go on too long, in particular the two mazes, which each could be half as long and no less difficult or prone to luck. A few puzzles are just dumb (like the magnetic compass on the key), while others are stupidly easy and feel like padding (essentially everything on the ghost ship) -- you know exactly what to use an item one once you get it, and you get the item without even knowing it's there (the grease is a good example of this).
(5) There were several times in the game where I got way ahead of the logic. For example, the monkey was following me before I had any idea that I needed his help, I hit the tree with the boulder without knowing I needed bananas, most of the items I took I had no reason for taking. I went through many steps to get the oars, but I didn't really know what I was getting the oars for -- to row the boat, obviously, but to where? Lots of this "because it's there" stuff. (Indeed, the ghost ship is again a good example.)
(6) A big part of the game's "humor" is the idea that Guybrush goes through a huge undertaking and it's totally worthless. He completes the trials but nothing comes of it; he gathers the crew and the crew does nothing; Toothrot had a ship all along; he "rescues" Elaine and she didn't need rescuing; he gets the voodoo rootbeer and it's promptly lost. The thing is, whatever the merits of this from the standpoint of humor, it undercuts the player's sense of accomplishment and when it connects with #4, it makes the whole game feel kind of unengaging -- the things you try to do come to nothing, while the things you do unknowingly yield some result. Grim Fandango has basically the same structure except that Manny isn't a failure at everything he does, and IMO it works much better.
(7) In several instances, important hotspots are inexplicably hard to find, even when they aren't meant to be hidden. The most obvious of these is the hatch on the ship in the second part of the game. (That section also had the annoying fact that the rope ladder had to be interacted with using "walk to" not "use." Oh well.) I am not opposed to hiding hotspots. For one thing, they can encourage the player to more closely study the scene (which can itself reveal fun visual details). For another, where you're trying to convey that an item is hidden among others, small hotposts achieve mimesis. But that really didn't seem to be how the hard-to-find hotspots worked in MI. (The one "justifiable" hidden hotspot might be Herman's fort.)
A few other observations:
(1) I'd forgotten that the end of MI1 was so similar to the end of MI2.
(2) The sequence inside the wall in Elaine's manor is really funny and clever. There were a couple other similarly clever parts. A few of the puzzles are really great (most of them mentioned above).
(3) I was shocked to see that Sam & Max were among the idols at the monkey head. Apparently the Lucas guys were fans of the comic strip long before Hit the Road was made.
I mean, the game is still a bajillion times better than almost every other adventure game (certainly including Primordia), in part because it does have a good number of very clever puzzles, but it feels more like a proof of concept of the greatness that MI2 achieved.