• Welcome to ZD Forums! You must create an account and log in to see and participate in the Shoutbox chat on this main index page.

Monkey Island and other Lucas Arts Point and Click Games Discussion

Princess Niki

Allons-y
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Aug 27, 2011
Location
Alola
So I just beat a Monkey Island game for the first time despite owning the 4th one since I was 11. I have played a little bit of the 3rd one but thankfully so that I finish them in story order the first one I beat was The Secret of Monkey Island. I have always found the series to be a charming and funny one and I look forward to what number 2 has to offer. I am amused at how bad Guybrush is at speaking when he first meets his beloved Elaine. Considering the first time I saw the pair they were already married.
 

TheGreatCthulhu

Composer of the Night.
Joined
Jan 22, 2016
Location
United States of America
Gender
Very much a dude.
Monkey Island is such a great series of point 'n' clicks! One of the best PC games to this day.

Other games from LucasArts I'd recommend is Sam N Max Hit the Road, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, The Dig, and Loom.

All great point 'n' clicks.

Also, there's several in-jokes and gags throughout the Monkey Island series that a lot of MI vets like myself overlooked upon first playthrough.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
Great topic @Princess Niki

I really like point and click adventure games. Both the Classic and modern ones. I do also like some of the games that used the SCUMM engine.

The first point and click game I ever played was Shadowgate on the NES. One of the better NES games of this genre. I really liked it though it was on the short side and a little hard.

After that I played Maniac Mansion. The game that SCUMM is named after. I remember always throwing Dave in the dungeon. He had no special skills but his music was the best. Tons of replay value if you want to beat the game with lots of different character combinations.

Then shortly after this I discovered two games in this genre that totally hooked me and are the reason I love this genre of games.

Secret of Monkey Island 2 - LeChunk’s Revenge.
I played this before the first game in the series. Since then I have played all 5 games in the series and can easily say this second game is my favourite. It is certainly the black sheep of the series. Quite different in tone and Guybrush appearance to the other four games. I highly recommend this game to all fans of the genre.
I play the VGA port with full midi soundtrack. This is also present in the remade special edition. It’s the classic mode and classic music. The modern version there is good too but just does not capture the atmosphere like the classic version does.
Overall I enjoyed the four original games and the 5th Telltale game.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
The second game that hooked me to this genre. A great game with a story so good it could have been a movie. Better than that Crystal Skull thing. This game is split up into 3 parts. There is three totally different ways to play the second part. Visiting different locations. It’s fun to try them out.

Also these 3 paths are forshadowed at the begin of the game.
Fight Biff to make the fight path easier to access.
Talk your way past Biff to make the conversation path easier to access.
Avoid Biff entirely and push the boxes to enter the theatre to make the teamwork path easier to access.

Mind you, when you talk to Sophia (I think that’s her name) in her office just before part 2, you can choose any of the 3 options for part 2 if you know what to say regardless of how you got past Biff. Not that hard.
Some decent replayability here because of this.! A great game:

Also another old school game of this genre I liked back in the day was Simon the Sorcerer. I think it’s sequel was not as good, but the first game was quite good and worth a play for fans of the genre.

Of the more modern games on this genre, a couple stabs out to me as great. Apart from the 5th Monkey Island game.

Back To The Future
This was a Telltale game in 5 parts. I really liked it. I thought the story was so good it could have been made into a hypothetical 4th movie. Really fun and really well done.

The Samorost trilogy of games are very different. Still point and click adventure games but a reimagining of the genre. There’s no item list at the bottom or push/pull/talk/etc set of buttons either. You just move and interact with the environment. It sounds basic in practice but it’s done really well in reality and they will make you think really hard to finish them. I really liked these games.

Machinaruim and Botanicular by the same folks who made Samorost are also worth checking out. Quirky, puzzle filled and are not the standard type of point and click adventure game.

There is a lot more games out there in this genre. I have played some of them but I thought I would just mentioned some of my favourite ones.

To finish off, this I’d like to share some trivia about point and click adventure games.

Almost all games are developed by first making a quick demo to test the base concept. To see if it works and if it’s fun. For Splatoon this demo was rectangular blocks (ie tofu) shooting the ink on the ground. A quick and basic test of the base concept of the game. This usually occurs before story and characters are thought of.

However point and click games are the one exception to this rule. A quick demo does not show how good the concept is as all games on this genre are played in very similar ways. It’s the story and interactivity that make or break the game. So you don’t k ow if your idea is good or not till much later in development. This makes point and click adventure games very tricky and risky to develop. A risk that few developers are willing to take today.
 

Princess Niki

Allons-y
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Aug 27, 2011
Location
Alola
I just finished LeChuck's Revenge last night and it's ending has left me confused but the one reference I really remember is the Star Wars one When LeChuck says that he is Guybrush's brother.

I might play The Curse of Monkey Island today if I have time.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom