Context! I like the Special Edition of Monkey Island 2 a lot. But certain things disappointed me, mainly around some sloppy implementation of the (fantastic sounding) soundtrack. I keep on having to explain them to people so instead I scribbled them all down last night so I can just link people to it. I’m sticking to stuff which is actually incorrect or broken, rather than stuff I just personally don’t like.
10) The original music when you switch to classic mode has been recorded badly, with many wrong instruments and other issues. I didn’t get the SE version to hear the old music, but still, it’s sloppy.
9) One of the biggest dramatic moments in the game (involving Largo and a beard) is slightly spoiled by a music cue coming in prematurely, cutting off the epic church organ motif that is supposed to play. When I checked the file, the cue is in there, so it’s just a timing issue. We’ll be seeing lots of timing issues in this list.
8) Some of the music fails to loop properly. For example, sometimes in the Mardi Gras Fish Fry, the music just stops altogether or switches to the version you hear when outside or walking around town.
7) A lot of the music from Booty Island has been missed out and replaced by a generic background track. Dinky Island has a similar problem… I don’t expect this missing music will be fixed any time soon, and what they have works fine, but it’s a bit of a shame.
6) Some of the music cues are out of sync with the on-screen action, for example resurrecting Rapp Scallion and Guybrush being startled by the LeChuck costume.
5) The list of more productive things to do is missing from the end credits (which contains a small cutscene which is, once again, out of sync)
4) The opening credits sequence is missing. It’s a mystery as to why they’d want to take it out, as it’s sort of an iconic sequence for fans of the game.
3) The spitting contest puzzles and a puzzle in Stan’s Used Coffins require ludicrously fast timing to get right, to the point that I thought the puzzles were broken for a while.
2) It seems like they just forgot to include any iMUSE implementation in the 360 version. The PC and PS3 versions have nice smooth transitions in the Woodtick music, but the 360 misses this completely. Other parts are buggy - in the swamp, instruments do gradually get added but when you enter the shack, it skips back to the start of the song, ruining the effect. True, this is only one version of the game, but it’s a huge oversight.
1) The bone song’s vocal track is out of sync with the music and gets worse as it goes along. How they missed this is beyond me and spoils of of the better moments of a great game.
