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Monkey Island: Special Edition OFFICIAL!


spiralout

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Better audio quality, perhaps? CMI was a gigagbyte and most of that space and was taken up by the audio and video. They probably have much faster internet connections than us, most ISPs aren't very good in the UK, my download has been going on forever too.

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They've certainly made some strange design decisions on this game.

Since you don't normally see your inventory, you don't really know if what you tried to do with inventory items actually worked until you bring up the inventory again.

Must be quite confusing for first time players.

And the dialogue seems to have some odd pauses betwen sentences some times.

That and the fact you can't play the game only using the mouse either.

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Better audio quality, perhaps? CMI was a gigagbyte and most of that space and was taken up by the audio and video. They probably have much faster internet connections than us, most ISPs aren't very good in the UK, my download has been going on forever too.

 

Hmm... I don't think so. 2.5gb in 20 mins? You'd have to have a 10mbs connection... which we do have here in the UK -- I just don't have one! :)

 

Edit: 99%!!!

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The download/used space is extraordinarily huge for an old (and relatively small) game with some high res drawn static backgrounds. I guess voicing every piece of dialogue does take a lot of space... At least it seems like the voicework won't be horribly compressed as in Tales of Monkey Island, I'd rather have the game take a lot of space than settle for what Telltale offered.

 

What is up with steam and this game? Originally it connected me to my local server at a blazing 920 kb/s, until my neighbor (whom I share the connection with) apparently couldn't access anything or get enough speed so they restarted the router.... ever since, it only downloads on a slow server outside my country resulting in it affecting my monthly download cap and a long waiting time.

 

Anyway, I've paused the download a few times, even restarted steam in an attempt to connect back to the local server (I really wish they would offer you to download only from a specific server) and the whole download has restarted from scratch, TWICE! once from 89% and then again at 39%..... I've given up hope to try it out tonight, gonna let it download overnight. Sadly I don't have nearly as much time to play it in the next few days as I had tonight :(

So consider yourself warned, do not pause or at least not close the steam client while it downloads.

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Just completed it on Xbox. Brilliant. I don't know why some of you guys don't like the art. It's pretty damn near the original. Spotted one or two things missing, nothing big, no Ghost pirates on LeChuck's side of the church during the wedding, was something only just spotted.

 

It was 510mb to download on the 360. Managed to get 9 out of the 12 achievements first time round, not bad! One other thing which I think could confuse new comers is the not so obvious possibility of combining items.

 

Also spotted this little easter egg..

 

 

 

Manny Calavera in the bottom left corner of the Ghost Ship screen

Clicky

 

 

 

I tip my hat at the artists who worked on it, because they were never going to live up to everyones expectations. Had they been more flamboyant it wouldn't have been as true to the original game, then even more people would complain.

 

Sooo..

Guybrush Threepwood will return, ay?

 

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Still playing it now, only got home from work 2 hours ago. LOVE IT, think they did a stellar job. I could nit pick a few TINY things on a few sprites but overall I am extremelly happy. Especially the outstanding voice and sound/music work.

 

All the backgrounds look gorgeous to me and despite a few very minor anatomical issue's I love the look of all the characters.

 

Very happy chappy here :D

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I played a little and it's a very nice package overall.

I played in 1920x1200 and the artworks seem to be true 1080p resolution. When you play in that resolution, the better backgrounds feel like you are inside the painting.

Some of the backgrounds have lots of little details that enhance the caribbean / piratey flavor and even enhance the lighting mood. The drifting fog and clouds are nice.

Some of the backgrounds are a little bit more loosely drawn than others, you can feel that the artist had a nice brush stroke.

Some are a little bit more sloppy and others are pretty anally correct to the original (church) and miss out on enhancing on the original, but that is to be expected when different artists work on such a project.

Overall everything is as consistent or more consistent as in the original artwork.

Short of totally redoing all the rooms (including dimensions) what we got is pretty much the best result possible. Of course some rooms could be a little nicer here and there, but the original ones were even more lacking in that regard.

There is even a hint of a lighting system for the characters. They are able to get darker or get illuminated by fire. Something which the original lacked too and was only introduced in MI2 (somewhat).

The F10 Button is amazing.

Sadly there seems no option to skip dialogue sentences. So no "." Button.

Speech is very good and sound quality is great. Seems that the speech even has different reverb in different locations. There was one instance where a joke was weaker as in the original: When you tell the 3 Pirate leaders what scum they are, only the music stops and the rather loud ambience of the pirates chatting continues, so the ackward silence until they tell you that indeed they are scum is not as good as in the original.

The lack of the onscreen interface and inventory is a bit sad and for newcomers the game might feel a little talky at the beginning. In the original you were encouraged to try all sorts of stupid combinations of verbs and inventory, with this new system, newcomers might miss out on some of the subtle jokes hidden when experimenting with all the items/verb possibilities.

I've been just walking around Melee so far, so all impressions are of the early Part I.

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yes but it seems to skip a whole dialogue, not only the current sentence.

 

btw the SE seems pretty open and "hackable".

So with a little sneaking around the data files, you could be able to alter lots of details.

enabling speech in classic mode should also be doable.

 

Assets seems to be sorted like this:

art/ui/credits/remonkeyedgamepc.credits.xml

art/ui/credits/classicgame.credits.xml

art/textures/SurfaceWaterNormalMap.png

art/Textures/GhostAura.png

art/Textures/OceanwavesNormalMap.png

audio\speech.info

 

XWB extractor 1.1 seems to be able to open up the audio files

dunno about the big pak file.

So let the dissecting begin!

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I could nitpick this game to death but overall, it's pretty good. It would be great if you could play with the old visuals and the new sounds. Maybe they'll patch it someday.

 

They do need to patch it at some point anyway. There was this pretty annoying bug at the part where you left Mêlée Island. After the chapter screen the game played the chapter screen music again instead of the music it should've been playing. Did this happen to any of you or was it just a freak occurrence? The music played in the classic mode just as it should have and also played when I loaded the autosave that was already on the ship's deck.

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I'm absolutely blown away. BRAVO LucasArts!! I feel like a kid again, this was such a great day. I'm only completed the three trials thus far but it's been an amazing experience. I can't wait to get to Monkey Island and see how it looks.

 

Now, just a couple of things. For the most part the voices are fine (Guybrush, Elaine, LeChuck/Shintetop, Voodoo Lady, Mancomb Seepgood, Captain Smirk) I think they did an outstanding job with both the shopkeeper and the Sword Master. The voices sounded exactly like I thought they should but... I hate er dislike both Cobb's and Otis. I don't know why they just bugged. Am I the only one? And I'm not looking forward to hear Stan (if it's the same voice from Curse) I dunno that voice felt all wrong that character but it's probably just me on that one.

 

LucasArts, thank you again for doing this and I'm looking forward to Special Editions for Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Loom and of course Monkey Island 2.

 

So now, everyone go out and buy this game and the re-releases as well. We need this to do really well.

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Argh... I know I'm going to sound like an ungrateful whiney uber fanboi... and maybe that's what I am, but I don't like it. I hope I'm in a massive minority and I suspect that it's only because I know the original so well. But...

 

1. The new artwork looks a little shoddy in places (why couldn't they line up the cliff face, for example, so that, when Guybrush follows the original walk path, it looks semi-decent?!). There's weird white lines around things that haven't been cut-out properly. Some of the artwork literally looks unfinished.

 

2. There's irritating pauses between dialogue... for no good reason! This is just unbelievably bad. There MUST be a way to fix it.

 

3. Some of the line-readings are sometimes incredibly off. Even the excellent Dominic Armato and the fantastic Earl Boen seen to have been given some bad direction on occasions. But other characters suffer much worse... Estvan's "You could wait for the cook to notice you, but that could take all day. Just find a mug and sneak into the kitchen. That's what we all do." Nooo.

 

4. The characterizations, for the most part, seem terrible. Like they've tried to inject "more humour" at every available opportunity and failed miserably... Random characters speak with the most outrageous voices for no good reason. Cobb, the rat guy ("I thought it was rats"). No other MI game does this, why did they do it here?

 

5. The music seems to suffer from the same problem as above: "Let's try and make EVERYTHING funny!" Even LeChuck's theme is played for laughs... it's supposed to be somewhat menacing, not sad trombone.

 

6. The control system is ABOMINABLE. I have to press a key to get the verbs up? I have to press a key to get the inventory up? I have to press TWO KEYS simultaneously to get them both up? It's horrendous! It's beyond horrendous. New players will miss out on mouse wandering and experimentation...

 

7. My mouse clicks were not always responded to... Click, click, click, CLICK - ah it worked.

 

8. Finally, you all know this one: The new Guybrush isn't loveable.

 

If anything, my overall complaint would be that they've tried to ram as much "comedy" into MI as they possibly could... But that ISN'T Monkey Island. LeChuck is supposed to be SCARY, not funny. The relationship between Guybrush and Elaine, while a little shallow, admittedly, is supposed to feel genuine.

 

Dave Grossman said it best, except I can't find the quote. It was something like "Monkey Island is a balance between silly dialogue and serious storyline". It's NOT a camp game!

 

And the control system... Oh man, it's terrible. TOMI's inventory system seems like a masterpiece in comparison.

 

I just CANNOT believe that the people who made the SE are thinking to themselves "THIS is how I always imagined Monkey Island!"... it's like they've tried to think what the fans would want instead of trusting what THEY would want.

 

Anyways, as I said at the beginning, I STRONGLY believe that most of my reaction comes from the fact that I know the game so incredibly well. A return to it will probably lessen my reaction :) But this was my first reaction... I'll probably change my mind next time I play it.

 

Apologies to the devs. Glad to see I'm in a minority on this one.

 

Fanboi mode: OFF

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To me the pc version seems like the afterthought compared to the 360 version.

I remember people were afraid they couldn't play Tales of Monkey Island only by using the mouse.

Guess what, you can't play MI:se with only the mouse, you have to use the keyboard as well.

And the way the inventory keeps going away weither you did something right or wrong with an item is just bad. Not inviting to new players at all.

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2. There's irritating pauses between dialogue... for no good reason! This is just unbelievably bad. There MUST be a way to fix it.

 

Hacky fix only, I think, given the way the game works.

 

The pauses are due to the original game scripts' timing of dialogue lines. Since it's always the original game running (with the new stuff "on top"), dialogue lines can't start until the next line is displayed on screen in the original game. All timing is dictated by the original game. So, if the actor talks "too fast" (which he often will, because the line is faster to say than read), there'll be pauses.

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You can't play with just the mouse?

 

If that's the case, it's criminal. And unbelievable. And you must ask... WHY? I was gonna buy it this afternoon but hang on a sec. What's so bad about the PC version compared to the Xbox version? Amazing that one of the all time great PC point & click adventures has been remade to work better on a console and can't do with just the mouse. I'm having major 2nd thoughts about buying it, the 2 gigs will cost me another $20 as it is. I don't understand how these guys think, turning a 4mb game into a 2 gig download, and then getting rid of one of the most praised things in the original game, the interface. And then they make the best version for a console? I'm sad.

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Well to me it just feels like it was optimized for playing on a console thats all. You not being able to reconfigure the controls for one thing. And the pc version not even getting the nice Guybrush digging up the Lucasarts logo opening.

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The verb thing doesn't bother me, since I always used the keyboard shortcuts for verbs in SCUMM games anyway, but the lack of a permanent onscreen inventory is somewhat annoying.

 

Having tried it with my 360 controller too, the mouse & keyboard controls are still vastly superior, having an analogue stick control the cursor is just awkward.

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