Unpopular opinions

[BillyCheers]

I thought it could be fun to share some unpopular opinions on Monkey Island (or maybe LucasArts games in general) and talk about it – with all the love and kindness we can offer of course!

You don’t like Steve Purcell’s Boxart? Tell us about it. You love the Toothrot-Marley-revelation? We wanna know why! You hate Monkey Island? Here’s your chance to shout it out. (But maybe don’t expect much sympathy… 😅)

 

I’ll make the start with something soft: I never really liked the music from the SCUMM Bar in Monkey 1. It’s okay, But I get kind of annoyed pretty quick by it. 
On the other hand I just love the SCUMM Bar theme from EMI. The melody and how the rusty instruments play it just feels very piraty for me. I could listen to it all day. 😍

[Rum Rogers]

I... don't like The Dig that much compared to the other LucasArts adventures. Here I said it. Being a LucasArts adventure still means it has godly quality, still the almost total lack of humor and the absence of characters to talk with besides the crew never really clicked for me. I'll take it over 99% of the other non-LucasArts adventures though.

[madmardi]

Well, I probably have a lot connected to EFMI:

 

- I did enjoy the Toothrot-Marley-revelation, as I thought it was a cool connection between the first two and 4 th games.

- I'm glad they made the transition to 3D in Escape and had no issues whatsoever with the controls/interface

- I loved the whole last act (Monkey Island plus ending... including Monkey Kombat!) and felt it was much more satisfying and epic than the short and abrupt ending of CMI

 

But, I'm only putting those as BillyCheers mentioned the first one. The first thing that actually came to mind, is I actually love the LAs Star Wars games, especially Tie Fighter and Dark Forces, and have played some of them more than some of the adventure games. I just wish their success hadn't killed adventure games... (I know that's a overly simplified version of historic events)

 

Oh, and I really don't see why people like the second MI special edition much more than the first. For me there were too many little details they didn't get correct with MI2, starting with the missing opening credit sequence (Don't get me wrong, I'm still grateful for the SEs in the first place). Oh, and I didn't mind Guybrush's hair from the first SE.

 

This is fun - great topic starter! 😁

Edited June 8, 2022 by madmardi

[OzzieMonkey]

6 hours ago, Rum Rogers said:

I... don't like The Dig that much compared to the other LucasArts adventures. Here I said it. Being a LucasArts adventure still means it has godly quality, still the almost total lack of humor and the absence of characters to talk with besides the crew never really clicked for me. I'll take it over 99% of the other non-LucasArts adventures though.

Same. I still enjoy it, but my biggest problem with it, more than the lack of characters, is the ending.

 

The game posed several interesting moral and ethical questions and really challenged Boston's confidence in his abilities as a leader and a survivalist; in a lot of ways, it was a tragic story. Then the ending comes and it completely undoes everything and it becomes this sappy, happy ending with all the lessons up to this point being rendered meaningless. It really rubbed me the wrong way because it felt cheap; reading up on the novelization didn't do a lot to ease those feelings either. I wonder how much the troubled development played into that, it definitely comes across as rushed.

 

 

 

[Lagomorph01]

8 hours ago, Rum Rogers said:

I... don't like The Dig that much compared to the other LucasArts adventures. Here I said it. Being a LucasArts adventure still means it has godly quality, still the almost total lack of humor and the absence of characters to talk with besides the crew never really clicked for me. I'll take it over 99% of the other non-LucasArts adventures though.

I actually thought me liking the Dig was the unpopular opinion. It's far from my favourite LucasArts game, but I did enjoy my playthroughs immensely when I was a kid.

I should boot it up again to see how it holds up.

[BillyCheers]

4 hours ago, madmardi said:

- I did enjoy the Toothrot-Marley-revelation, as I thought it was a cool connection between the first two and 4 th games.

- I'm glad they made the transition to 3D in Escape and had no issues whatsoever with the controls/interface

- I loved the whole last act (Monkey Island plus ending... including Monkey Kombat!) and felt it was much more satisfying and epic than the short and abrupt ending of CMI

Those really are unpopular! Nice

And as for the ending, you're definitely right. They put more effort in this ending (weather you like it or not).

 

4 hours ago, madmardi said:

Oh, and I really don't see why people like the second MI special edition much more than the first. For me there were too many little details they didn't get correct with MI2, starting with the missing opening credit sequence (Don't get me wrong, I'm still grateful for the SEs in the first place). Oh, and I didn't mind Guybrush's hair from the first SE.

It was definitely noticeable that more work went into the SE for MI2. It's not perfect, but it fixes a lot of mistakes for me - although other "problems" remain: Partially unfinished/rushed backgrounds, the missing intro or the too comic-like designs for some characters.

 

As for Guybrush's hair: I get the problem (it may seem too modern for some), but it's not inappropriate. It fits the role and the time quite well. I didn't think it was that bad either. One of the better creative choices for MI1:SE. 😇

[madmardi]

5 hours ago, Lagomorph01 said:

I actually thought me liking the Dig was the unpopular opinion. It's far from my favourite LucasArts game, but I did enjoy my playthroughs immensely when I was a kid.

I should boot it up again to see how it holds up.

 

You know, The Dig was the last LA adventure I played, mainly because everyone online seemed to have mixed feelings about it. Yet going into it with low expectations I ended up really enjoying it. I thought it looked and sounded beautiful, and I really liked how the story was different than all the other adventures. Made me wish I had played it much earlier.

 

I guess that's a lesson I keep learning - expectations can really change the way you experience something. Guess that's why I'm trying to keep them low for RtMI and get pleasantly surprised. I rather that than be thoroughly disappointed.

[Jake]

3 hours ago, BillyCheers said:

As for Guybrush's hair: I get the problem (it may seem too modern for some), but it's not inappropriate. It fits the role and the time quite well. I didn't think it was that bad either. One of the better creative choices for MI1:SE. 😇

Truly nuclear unpopular opinion. This thread delivers. 
 

Unfortunately all my opinions are popular, universally beloved really. 
 

 

[Vainamoinen]

You just wait until I get home. I have a truly nasty, absurdly nitpicky, entirely subjective and completely senseless preference that dumps on all of the greatest people directly, and this thread is just right for it.

[BillyCheers]

I always thought his face in MI1 was much worse. He looks so overly dumb to me...

[Udvarnoky]

You gotta love how the cover made him a smirking asshole:

 

 

Presumably they went to the same seminar that the Dreamworks marketing department did where it was explained that the douchiest possible expression on a character's face is also the most ingratiating.

[Romão]

Some of the sections of Booty and Phatt Island kinda felt out of place, never felt quite piratey and took me a bit out of the setting. It's like they belong to a different game and ambiance, at times.

 

Scabb absolutely rules, though

[Kroms]

I don't think the loss of Freelance Police is that big a deal. I did come to it in retrospect, though, after Telltale's first season was out.

[Udvarnoky]

In retrospect, that's fair. So much about what made the cancellation of Freelance Police a drama was the context. Removed from that, it's more of a fascinating historical moment (at least for people of a certain scene) than anything else. It was pretty wild at the time to experience a community be in open contempt of a studio it essentially existed for the sake of. If you start the story in 2006, you're already in a post-divorce world where anything that made the situation visceral was over with.

[Elle]

Even though I played Last Crusade several times and enjoyed it greatly, I could never get into Fate of Atlantis for one reason or another. I started it many times but was always turned off by the art style (which, to me, felt so inferior to MI2, released at around the same time) or how the story is first presented. Then I turn on the voices, get annoyed by half of them, and turn them off again. I know it's highly regarded but I kind of hate it frankly. Maybe I'm just not that big of an Indy fan after all. Sorry!

[BillyCheers]

5 minutes ago, Elle said:

Even though I played Last Crusade several times and enjoyed it greatly, I could never get into Fate of Atlantis for one reason or another. I started it many times but was always turned off by the art style (which, to me, felt so inferior to MI2, released at around the same time) or how the story is first presented. Then I turn on the voices, get annoyed by half of them, and turn them off again. I know it's highly regarded but I kind of hate it frankly. Maybe I'm just not that big of an Indy fan after all. Sorry!

That's a really interesting one! I have to take a closer look at the graphics and voice acting on my next playthrough.

For me (maybe because of the age) Indy 3 never was that interesting. I only got to the catacombs yet and always thought: "I rather watch the movie for the millionth time...". Although I have to admit to be almost big an Indy fan as I am a MI fan. 🙃

[Toymafia88]

I'm going to sound like an old man..

 

I still don't like the Telltale Sam and Max voices.

 

Even though I adore these games, the loss of the Hit of the Road voices still bugs me to this day. I'd give anything to get those old voices back.

 

You always hear about the Bosco redub but I think they should have done more and redubbed Sam and Max.

 

Lets be honest, I'm pretty sure if Telltale could have got the original voices they would of. But they were a very small new company and it would cost too much. 

 

P.s mad respect to the Telltale voice actors. This is just personal preference. 😊

Edited June 8, 2022 by Toymafia88

[Jake]

I felt that way through the entire development of season one! They completely grew on me over the course of season two - I think the writers got more in the groove of writing for “our” Sam and Max - and by season three I wouldn’t have traded them for anything. 

 

I still do watch the Freelance Police trailer sometimes. It seems like another universe now, totally disconnected from the Telltale games, but it’s one I’d like to visit. 

[Lagomorph01]

I prefer the Hit the Road voices too. Although the Telltale ones did grow on me.

[Torbjörn Andersson]

My unpopular opinions:

• Insult sword fighting was clever in the first Monkey Island game, but really quite unnecessary in the others.
• The Monkey Island 1 "red herring" puzzle was much harder than the Monkey Island 2 "monkey wrench" one.
• The Amiga versions were inferior to, or at best on par with, their DOS counterparts. (There! I said it!)
• Day of the Tentacle is a much funnier game than Sam & Max Hit the Road.

[BillyCheers]

2 minutes ago, Torbjörn Andersson said:

 

• Insult sword fighting was clever in the first Monkey Island game, but really quite unnecessary in the others.

Totally agreee. And I was saving that for later, but here wo go: I like the concept of sword fighting (and don’t mind playing that part), but most of the insults are not funny at all to me… 

[Glokidd]

maybe not an unpopular thought but an unsettling one.

 

The Bernard/Hoagie/Laverne amalgamation was just another 3 headed monkey joke and I think it was lost on a lot of people 

[Elle]

12 minutes ago, Glokidd said:

The Bernard/Hoagie/Laverne amalgamation was just another 3 headed monkey joke and I think it was lost on a lot of people 

 

Not to mention it was impossibly creepy. I still have nightmares from that scene. Compared to that, The Fly looks like a visit at Grandma's.

[TimeGentleman]

There is a dialogue option when you've been 'Brundled' to try and distract a Purple Tentacle with the old three-headed monkey bit, to which he replies "The only three-headed monkey I can see is in front of me", so I expect most players would have noticed it...

[cinnamon]

I liked the Monkey Island 2 ending as a series ending and the "mystery" reveal.