The Curse of Monkey Island

The Curse of Monkey Island, the third game in the series and the first with voice acting. Really good voice acting as well. I played this game so much that many lines I still remember and especially how they were annunciated. Who can forget lines like "Damn you saucy female, what do you mean?", "You have been struck with the hair demon", "Beware the horrors of... SKULL ISLAND! It's a Duck!" and everyones favorite skeleton "I am MURRAY, evil demonic skull, turn back, turn back, darkness will envelop you! Bwahahahaha!!!". Many fond memories. They also reintroduced insult sword fighting, but this time on the high seas which meant you had to rhyme. Rather fun gathering insults. Also, the graphics in this game I believe is hand drawn animation and it looks fantastic. Compare to say King's Quest VII or Leisure Suit Larry 7 which also was in "cartoon form", but it wasn't as fluent as in this game. At least in my opinion.

Story then, probably due to the original creators leaving Lucasarts before the start of the game, we jump forward in time and Guybrush Threepwodd has escaped the carnival of the damned and is a drift the caribbean seas. He stumbles upon LeChuck laying siege to Elaines fort at Puerto Pullo and is captured and thrown in the hold. He manages to escape and by doing so causes LeChuck's FLAMING VOODOO CANNON BALL to backfire destroying LeChuck. At the beach at dawn he proposes to Elaine with a giant diamond ring Guybrush found in LeChuck's treasure hold. Of course it contains a "gastly, disfiguring voodoo curse on it" so it turns Elaine into a solid golden statue. So you have to free her from the curse. 

I love this game, maybe for nostalgia, but replaying the games in order I notice so many throwbacks to the first two games and it makes me crack a smile. The only boring part I feel is when you return to the Carnival of the damned. It's set up as the final confrontation, but before that you have to undo a similar curse from the end of the second game and then you have to figure out a way to destroy LeChuck once again. It just dragged on for me and stupid me got stuck until I checked a walkthrough to understand that I was supposed to make another hangover remedy. Again, since that is the closest we had for a voodoo spell I guess it makes sense, but still.

I feel you buddy!

Since I bought the trilogy pack I didn't start with this game so I could get the whole story, but when I got stuck in the others I usually changed game and I came the furthest with this before a walkthrough I believe. If that is due to being easier or greater design I can't say, but my guess would be easier. Then again, while I think about it, I think I got stuck in finding the Voodoo lady, since I needed to pull the alligator tongue and I seem to recall a memory when looking that up.... how embarrassing, that is like the third puzzle of the game. I seem quite lousy with these kind of games.