I greatly appreciate that this one tries to do some things that are slightly different even though after this they went back to what they did before which I understand was in response to feedback. This one has a very similar UI to the third in the series, where you hold down one of the mouse buttons over what you want to interact with, several options pop up, you move and let go to select one of them and then you'll do it. This is much more effective than having to use hotkeys or scrolling with the wheel which makes several parts legitimately difficult because of the speed with which you have to move sometimes. And by the end I still hadn't memorized everything. It can sometimes slightly be awkward because there are still a number of different options to choose from but it is a huge improvement nevertheless. I truly have no idea why they didn't just go with this for the remaster of the one that preceded this as well. This one does not feature the insult sword fighting and it has much less of a focus on Elaine. Ultimately it doesn't really replace them with something equivalent but I do appreciate not just playing the hits. This one does maintain almost every strength and weakness. It wouldn't be until the next entry before Guybrush faced consequences for the countless things that he does that are ethically wrong and sometimes even incredibly ineffective. Or for there to be much of an emotional drive to what you're trying to accomplish. It continues to simply be about ego. This time he wants to prove that he is not a one trick pony. He's been bragging endlessly and people are sick of it. I like to think of it as these first two being like Monty Python whereas it was then an entry by Edgar Wright. Something along the lines of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. In each case, incredibly funny, sometimes satirical, challenging the form, toying with tropes and such. But not always getting you emotionally invested and having you really accomplish something that makes you feel like it wasn't just all for fun. Don't get me wrong. I grew up in the 90s, I remember how cynical the decade was. That's why some of these feel so inconsequential. It really is just a somewhat child-friendly version of this nihilism that went all out in the violent games like the first person shooters, Mortal Kombat and such. I do really appreciate that this series did eventually grow up, drop the training wheels. I acknowledge that this was not popular with everyone and I totally understand being frustrated with the change since this one is so similar in most respects that people thought that this is what we would keep getting. To be clear I hold no ill will towards Ron Gilbert or his many fans. The ending is truly something. After completing this it took me about an hour to decide if I absolutely hated it or loved it. I don't think anyone can really come down anywhere in the middle. You genuinely have to see it to believe it. This does have every single type of joke; verbal, clever, gross out, pop culture, innuendo, etc. In addition to simply having you directly interact with static things you also pick up and combine things. This goes beyond being an effective joke delivering engine and actually lets you do stuff that is hilarious which lands much better than simply going for the former, which too many comedy games settled for. The voice acting is again excellent and they really add to a lot of the best parts. If you want the original graphics you could just press a key to toggle between them and this time the voice acting remains for the classic look so you don't have to do without that if you're feeling especially nostalgic. This one has some of the best characters, locations and situations. There are still some really offensive stereotypes so I do appreciate that they did at least make some of them be really useful to the player, rather than always a obstacle since we have a huge problem today with racists who think that people of color are inherently harmful which of course leads to persecution. This has a pretty decent length. I could see myself returning to it; it's not so ridiculous that you just get exhausted. And I appreciate that they really underline some of the pointless stuff it has you do which was hard to completely avoid including around this time in order to make games long enough. But a lot of them would play it straight and this one practically feels like it's pointing and laughing. And it's hard not to laugh along with it as it strings you along on a non-zero number of occasions. The difficulty is also pretty good though some of the moon logic continues to be frustrating. I think the idea was that a friend group would assign each other different areas and tasks and each of them would try everything they could until they solved something then talk to each other and figure out exactly how to get all the way through it. Maybe it was also one of those things where they had to make sure you couldn't complete something in a weekend since you might just return it and they wouldn't be able to make as much money. Some of my favourite parts include all the titles you can look up in the library including the one supposedly written by yourself and apparently absolutely terrible, and the infinite recursion joke. Not to mention the how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood bit. This does well as a sequel taking stuff from the original and changing context and not going too ridiculous. I strongly recommend this to all fans of the genre, the series and laughing. 8/10.
