Play the secret of monkey island1/31/2024 ![]() ![]() (Well, sort of, you know, I'll get to that, hold on). IT'S A GAME THAT ANYONE CAN PLAY, LIKE, ANYONE, EVEN YOUR MoM WHO HATES THESE BLEEPING, BUZZING THINGS But Guybrush is a sweetheart, a pure soul, as simple as a blank sheet of A4 and every bit as beautiful. Ask an average man to start a fire in a forest using just stones and twigs and he'll burst into tears, try to call an Uber, fail, and die there on the spot, because what's the point of going on any longer if you can't even get a 4G signal. It's like somebody made the world of Minority Report a reality 50 years ahead of schedule. Have you filled up a car lately? You can pay at the pump. This is the 21st century-robots do most things for us. We can all relate most of us are completely without skills. His one talent from the outset: an ability to hold his breath under water for ten minutes, which may come in handy later on-assuming you're not so immediately handy with that weighing-you-down idol. Guybrush Threepwood, our protagonist who begins with no goal greater than to become a mighty pirate, is almost utterly useless at everything. OK, so the solutions can be more oblique, cerebrally befuddling and occasionally adroitly testing (in as much as sometimes you need to move quickly through the menus, or risk losing your grog all down your trousers), but there's no doubting their genius. Look, you know how when you played Portal 2, and you got to a really tough room, but then you cracked it and wow, the rush, eh? The Secret of Monkey Island has that in spades. The route to finding the Treasure of Mêlée Island, using dance steps, is simply glorious game design. Sometimes items need combining to solve a story-blocking puzzle, but once it all clicks in your head, the logic jumps up and down on the skull like a blood-lusting big cat on a children's inflatable castle: It's all you can see, terrifyingly apparent now you've noticed it. There's room enough in there for a shovel, a sword, a couple of cooking pots, a red herring (get it, you see, at the bridge, with the troll, a red herring?), a box of delicious cereal, umpteen bananas, a fantastic idol that could get you killed, if you're a fool (or simply want to see Guybrush dead), and so much more. Monkey Island is full of stuff, stuff that you-as wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who I'll get onto in just a second-pick up and shove inside your blouson, a shirt with infinite pocket space. IT HAS BRILLIANT PUZZLES THAT MAKE NO SENSE, UNTIL THEY DOĬase in point: the rubber chicken. That's what you need to zip across a cable connecting the starting (chapter one) area of Mêlée Island to the small hideaway of Meathook, the Sea Monkey crew member in waiting. What you're left with is a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. (OK, most things.) It's so perfectly streamlined, with every ounce of fat that'd get added to proceedings if it were made today left on the proverbial cutting room floor. Everything you pick up has a vital part to play in the game's progression. You'll finish it in a couple of evenings. The Secret of Monkey Island doesn't do that. But so many games get bloated through pointless distractions, needless collectibles developers swell their products with acres of shit we just don't need. Long-ass games are amazing when their worlds are constantly rewarding- Bloodborne, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Fallout 4 all qualify from 2015. There comes a point in every self-identifying gamer's life when they catch sight of themselves in the mirror and see the hollowness of their eyes, the paleness of their skin, the cracks in their lips, and yellowing of their nails, and conclude: I need to spend less time playing these fucking things.
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