The Secret of Monkey Island is one of the finest games ever created. Impeccably designed, incredibly funny, wonderfully charming. While some areas have aged better than others, I still firmly believe that Ron Gilbert understood the adventure game genre better than anyone else.

I do have a few reservations about this Special Edition however - while I admire the effort put in to update all the art assets, the new style leaves a lot to be desired. It's reminiscient of the art direction from the Curse of Monkey Island onwards, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but I don't think it works as well for this game. After Ron Gilbert ceased to be the lead on the series, it took a slightly different approach, which warranted a cartoony style.

What this means is the art direction is somewhat dissonant with the tone of the game here. I also feel like something is really lost in the transition. The old game's art was beautiful, and particularly nice in the close-ups. The best example I can give is the part where Guybrush needs to touch the parrot. There's this screen with a close-up of Guybrush's face, and a lot of the atmosphere and tension of that scene is undercut without the serious style. Yes, the scene ends up being a subversion and a joke, but that works because it's played so seriously at first.

Not to mention, some of the backgrounds appear to be unfinished, and you can see the old pixel art poking through on some screens. A bit disappointing there.

"So switch to the classic graphics!" I hear you shout. Well. I'll talk about that in a moment.

The Special Edition is not all bad though! Dominic Armato, Alexandra Boyd and Earl Boen all return to play Guybrush, Elaine and LeChuck respectively. To me, these are the definitive voices for these characters, and other versions of them have just felt... wrong. Charity James as Elaine in Escape from Monkey Island and Adam Harrington as LeChuck in Tales of Monkey Island, to be precise.

For me the ideal way to play this game is original graphics with voice acting, but uh oh! What's this? Turning on Classic Mode removes the voices? Yeah. That's lame. Luckily, a bit of modding can do wonders, and the 'Ultimate Talkie Edition' of this game is now my favoured way of playing through it. It's just a shame we couldn't do that by default.

That being said, it's worth picking this game up just so you can do that, and also because even with the Special Edition, it's one hell of a game. I just have nitpicks because I'm a big fan of the series.