Return To Monkey Island is a nostalgia project by Terrible Toybox, presenting as a narrative, point-and-click, video game. It’s available for $24.99 on Steam, we at CNM do not recommend it. Here is our spoiler filled rant about why on YouTube and Spotify.

AFTER EPISODE NOTES:
The Voodoo Lady appears in all the Monkey Island games.


BETTER GAMES TO PLAY INSTEAD:

Broken Age
Spy Fox in “Dry Cereal”
Grim Fandango
The Curse of Monkey Island
Hypnospace Outlaw
Paradigm
Welcome to Elk
The Henry Stickman Collection
Puzzle Agent (but only the first one NOT the second)

NOTE ON RANTING:
We at CNM do not set ourselves up to have bad experiences, this rant episode and game have both left all three of us exhausted. We play games we think we are going to like. We don’t finish games we don’t like normally. We played this entire thing hoping, against evidence, that the game would resolve into something worthwhile, and have SOMETHING interesting or unique to say. It did not. We hope to avoid future rant episodes.

Analysis rant commencing:
After watching a review of someone who also did not like the game (but only because of the ending) I have a few additional points.

First of all I am very tired of Nostalgia being an end all be all. I am tired of the narrative that games are a waste of time AS THE MAIN THEME OF A VIDEO GAME. This game seems to have the main theme of “Video games are childish, we should only play them to connect with our personal childhood.” These people need to get out more. Expand their horizons. Just because YOU have never played a game that felt like art to you does not mean they are not out there. Just because YOU carry baggage that video games are inheretly time wasters, with little to no value, does not mean that is true.

Anyone with that attitude could definitely benefit from checking out their local art scene. Visit local galleries and coffee shops that sponsor local artists. If your town has a local music scene or is amazing enough to have experimental theatre, poetry and open mics, those are excellent also, excellent for exposure to raw expression. Expose yourself to the ways people shine light on their demons through art. Oh, yes most of it is unpolished, some is silly. Some is tedious, or even offensive. Witnessing it may challenge you in ways you didn’t expect. That is the core of art. (I will express my expanded views on Art and video games in an upcoming <eventually, sigh> episode series.)

There is no expectation that a video game will aspire to be art, and there wasn’t going into this one either. I’m giving this project the benefit of the doubt when I put it in an aspirational category, like the storytellers were working hard to say something. That something being, possibly, we are better than the escapism of video games. This is a tired message, and in this game it is presented in an extremely tedius way that insults the cleverness and whimsy that I loved about the larger Monkey Island series as whole. I am left with the feeling that I grew up and the writer’s didn’t, and very disappointed.

********EXTRAS********

MEMES!

Playlist on our YouTube
This playlist includes:
1. Return to Monkey Island-Review by Zero Punctuation
This review parallels ours.
2. Evolution of PC Audio- As Told by Secret of Monkey Island by, LGR
I always thought Monkey Island had the best PC speaker
soundtrack ever.
3. Return to Monkey Island-Complete Soundtrack (complicated sauce)
The soundtrack is solid, just like the rest of the series.
4. Why Nostalgia is Total Bull- People Watching by, Cracked
Short film with an uplifting take on why it’s better now.
5. The Problem With Nostalgia by, SolePorpoise
A look at a few films and a video game (What Remains of Edith
Finch), that talks about looking back as and adult versus reliving a
child’s experience. Found this interesting while not directly about
this game.

Finally, if you did buy the game and want to know how those achievements play out, while not wanting to play anymore like I did, you can view them all on this playlist by, The ZOD. It includes an entire walk through first.

As we said at the beginning of the episode, we wanted to like the game. Sometimes life is just disappointing. -Giggleklutz