I...have this game listed as one of my top 5 games with good reason. Lucas Arts have outdone themselves with their classic string of Monkey Island games by keeping up to par with hilarious jokes,one liners and progressing story line. I’ve been waiting for seven years before this game was released by Lucas Arts since Monkey Island 2:Le Chucks Revenge.

Whats new in this game however is the colorful animation and detailed backgrounds. The animated cut scenes run fluently and almost make me wish they would make an animated movie as well. I was really excited about their new game being windows based since both games before were Ms-Dos games. The voice acting is also a first as they bring in Dominic Armato to do Guybrush Threepswoods piratey voice. Though a mighty pirate by his own account, it is a running joke throughout the games for characters to garble Guybrush Threepwood's unusual name, either deliberately or accidentally, including "Thriftweed", "Peepwood", "Gorbush" and "Threekwood". He is also referred as "Fancy Pants".

The origin of the name "Guybrush" ,according to Wikipedia, comes in part from Deluxe Paint, the tool used by the artists to create the character sprite. Since the character had no name at this point, the file was simply called 'Guy'. When the file was saved Steve Purcell, artist responsible for the sprite, added 'brush' to the file name, indicating that it was the Deluxe Paint "brush file" for the "Guy" sprite. The file name was then "guybrush.bbm", so the developers eventually just started referring to this unnamed 'Guy' as "Guybrush". Guybrush's surname "Threepwood" was decided upon in a company contest and is derived from P. G. Wodehouse's family of characters including Galahad Threepwood. "Threepwood" is also rumored to have been the name of Dave Grossman's RPG character.

So more about the game? You start off afloat in a bumper car after escaping the horrors of Big Whoop (Monkey Island 2) and rock up close to the shore of Plunder Island. The scene unfolds where the Zombie pirate Le Chuck gets batted time and again by the lovely govener,Elaine Marley. Both of them notice you and Le Chuck captures you and throws you into the hull of his ship as a prisoner, and so the adventure begins!

The music is catchy and fits in well with the different situations Guybrush finds himself in. Some scenes you can expect are grumpy lactose intolerant volcanoes, witty insult-sword fighting ( “Your as repulsive as a monkey in a negligee”,”I look that much like your fiancé?”) and a talking skull which seems to follow you wherever you go, planning his conquest over the world!

Monkey Island 3 is another great contribution to the genre of adventure gaming, packed with good humor and puzzling puzzle quests. If you enjoy adventure games and the previous Monkey Islands you’ll surely love this game.

Reviewed by:

Spazzimus