The Monkey Island series has always been one of my favorites; I fondly remember playing The Secret of Monkey Island for the first time in the computer lab at school. I don’t know who installed it on that particular PC, but I made sure to be the first one in the lab to nab it before anyone else.

Since then I have been keeping up with the series. I really enjoy the humor, puzzles, and point & click interface. When I was waiting for the next Monkey Island game to come out, I would pick up some other great Lucas Arts games such as Sam and Max Hit the Road, The Day of The Tentacle, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. If you have not had a chance to play these games, you really should pick them up now. If you have trouble playing the games, the ScummVM engine might help.

But enough reminiscing, on to the review! I picked up the game on Xbox Live for 800 Microsoft “Nixon Bucks” Points (10$). I chose the Xbox platform instead of the PC or iPhone because I wanted to play this game with my kids. Having played the game many times, I wanted a fresh perspective for this review. I wanted them to experience an adventure point-and-click game and show them that games can be great without having to blow something up every 30 seconds. The cool thing about this game is that it’s built on the old engine. When you want to see the old “jaggy lines” version (as my kids called it), you can switch over at any point in the game.

For being a game that’s almost 20 years old, it really held up well. My kids were actually involved in the story, laughed at the cheesy jokes, and even asked to play the sequel (even though it has not been remade yet and has “jaggy lines”). The game has revamped graphics, voice acting from the cast of The Curse of Monkey Island, and a new soundtrack. It even has a hint system built-in so you don’t have to stop playing to look up hints. If you can make it through the game without looking up hints on the XBLA version, you get an achievement.

I recommend you buy this game. The only complaint I had was that I already bought the game on floppy discs, then the re-released version on CD-ROM with an additional soundtrack, then once again on the LucasArts Classics Adventure Pack. I complained, but I really don’t know a fair way to verify that I already purchased 3 copies of the game…I am just being cheap :).