As promised, here's my 2 cents:
I bought Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition this morning. $10 is not a bad price for a classic, especially a full remake with speech! I had already seen screenshots (but I tend to avoid previews) so it was all rather new for me.
It only took me 5 minutes of playing to decide I was disappointed, though. While the speech was excellent, the graphics weren't. In fact, I switched over to classic view (F10 -> at least they were so smart as to include it) but then you lose the speech as well!
So what bugged me about the graphics? They just didn't work for me. Curse Monkey Island had great graphics because it was a completely different style and while it never felt "monkey islandy" to me (while the new Tales of Monkey Island DOES for some odd reason) it looked great on its own. This however ... well, everything feels wrong about it. Some parts look great but many just hit the mark.
The worst of all, is the character design, though. Guybrush looks terrible. TERRIBLE. I first thought he was a 3D character but he's actually a sprite and a badly animated one at that (but you need to see moving images to see that). His face looks NOTHING like the old Guybrush and while this is not the first time, it IS the first time that he looks completely wrong. His hair gives me shivers, his eyes look like he's on dope and whole manner is that of a corpse. For a character you'll be looking at for 10 hours, this is a very poor show, LucasArts.
For $10 you still get the original (although I think it sucks they don't give you the choice of speech) but the remake is not really for me. Graphics are so vital in an adventure game - to create a believably immersive world - and the original vibe is just lost in this remake. Well, this game WAS a cheap remake, but still ...
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