Return To Monkey Island

There is a COVID joke in Return To Monkey Island. This shouldn’t be surprising, given that the series has always given its pirates distinctly modern concerns – retirement, health inspections, adequately expressing the power of Loom’s 3D engine.

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The gag, involving two pirates vehemently denying any of the so-called ‘science’ on scurvy, shows that designer Ron Gilbert wants his game to fit in the present day. This is a Monkey Island that has a hint system. A Monkey Island with a controller setup that won’t break your fingers. But it’s also very much a game that tries to capture the essence of a journey that started all the way back in 1990, a story it’s now set to finish.

Return To Monkey Island begins with a tutorial that runs through the game’s rather simple systems. You have one button for talking and one for interacting with items – the game decides automatically whether you can look at, use or take the item in question. Thanks to a visual aid, you also immediately know when you can’t use an item with something, and all usable items in an environment are marked clearly. If you’re accustomed to an older generation of point-and-click games, it can almost seem a little too obvious to know everything that’s available to you straight away, but it also removes the frustration of randomly clicking around a screen in the hope of coming across something important.

This time around, Guybrush Threepwood is narrating his story to someone else. We’ll avoid spoiling who it is, but throughout the telling, Threepwood’s methods are repeatedly called into question – not by himself, but by the person to whom he is relaying his tale. It’s an idea that works well most of the time, but it can (often intentionally) lapse into monotony: you want to get to the adventure part, but first there are multiple favours to take care of and forms to fill out