As I already posted thoughts here what I’ll do here is go through rating the game and discussing the ending/secret.
Rating
Ron never made that many adventure games and his style is unique, to say the least. Point-and-click adventure games are an outdated concept now, a relic of the past, created at a time when game developers had to choose between exciting gameplay and exciting story. Effectively they sacrifice gameplay for story. One reason Super Mario 64 was so acclaimed was because it had broken out of the linear-style gameplay of traditional platformers (though previous Super Mario games had already achieved that to an extent) and story did not need to be sacrificed.
There’s a good reason why Return doesn’t mess with Curse and why Ron has been referring to it as “MI3” (even though its proper abbreviation is CMI as given in the game itself): many consider it to be the best LucasArts game ever released. I’m torn between choosing CMI or MI2 as the best MI instalment, and I personally think that Grim Fandango is near perfection as far as adventure games go (especially the remastered version that adds the point-and-click interface to the game), regardless both are truly excellent games.
Ranking Monkey1 is difficult. Part1 is its weak point, especially with insult sword fighting requiring repeated failures and blind random luck with insults, and as this violates Ron’s rulebook (published 1989) in several ways. There’s no incremental reward for winning the fights vs losing them, and players have no way of knowing how far they are advancing towards completing their mission to learn enough insults to beat the Sword Master. It’s also arbitrary because of the random chance element and the fact that players don’t know how many insults they don’t yet know. It’s wheel-spinning as well (or as Ron puts it “caging the player”) and they don’t really have another quest to be completing at the same time. This is because the three trials are not balanced - the other two trials are completed in a very straightforward way whereas this task/puzzle takes the most work out of the three and therefore the player runs out of options more times than not. In other words, the three puzzles to complete the three trials should have been more evenly balanced in the number of steps/amount of work required to complete each one. Due to the issues with Part 1 I’m ranking MI1 as 7.5/10.
Return’s major issues are: (1) It does not feel like a proper standalone instalment and is far too reliant on the player’s previous knowledge and experience with playing MI1. MI2 and Curse both feel like proper standalone games, and the player’s experience is not downgraded if they haven’t played the previous instalment/s. (2) the lack of a proper MacGuffin to drive the story & consequently the ending/“secret”. (3) it doesn’t have as many “memorable” moments as compared with previous games. (4) the interface with no verbs at all is a serious downgrade, although it must be said that the to-do list, the in-game hint system, and the easier access to the island maps are all major upgrades to the player interface. However with no verbs you never get quirky responses from Guybrush when trying to do futile things. This was as a result of being forced to plan for every interaction the player could take, whereas when the game decides you can only the option of one or two interaction options all the quirkiness inherent in doing weird things is removed from the game and the player experience suffers as a result. With a better player interface I would have ranked Return as 7.5/10.
Therefore Return ranks fourth with with Tales coming fifth and Escape obviously best left forgotten.
Ranking
- MI2 & CMI : 9/10
- MI1 : 7.5/10
- RMI : 6.5/10
- TMI : 5.5*/10 (estimate without re-playing)
EMI
SPOILER ALERT
The secret & ending
What this game lacks is a MacGuffin that the player can engage with. No ordinary punter cares about learning the true secret conjured up in 1989, especially as it turns out to be little more than the inspiration for the idea/an in-joke and was already figured out as it is.
Here’s the problem with the ending: Ron violates his own rulebook. Yes that one again, read it well. End objectives need to be clear, but they aren’t and this is the very first rule! The end objective in this game is to break out of an Escape Room. But the story never lets you know that this is the objective, and you don’t discover that you are in one until after you solve the last puzzle of the game and break out of it. Therefore the play has had no idea that’s what they were working towards and there’s no satisfaction in it. Ron criticised Curse for marrying Guybrush and Elaine, but at least the player had a meaningful MacGuffin they could believe in, and in the end they achieve the goal and get the girl.
The ending came as no surprise to me, but this required external knowledge. The secret was figured in almost every detail some 15+ years ago now with Ron never acknowledging it. For many players not expecting it they will be very dissatisfied with it.
This was avoidable. You can do two things at once. You could have let the player know that Guybrush is trapped and must escape, and that it is the ultimate goal of the game. “Escape from LeChuck”. Or you could have had a different MacGuffin, as long as it’s something for the player to believe in and feel they achieved at the end.