Return to Monkey Island confidently clings to its powerful DNA

polygon.com:

For whatever critiques you could level at the Monkey Island franchise, you have to admire its utter refusal to die.

Today’s release of Return to Monkey Island marks 13 years since the last game, Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island, an episodic adventure from 2009. That hiatus was preceded by a nine-year break that followed Curse of Monkey Island, which was the final LucasArts adventure game. Did I mention there was a six-year lapse before that?

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Return to Monkey Island marks the return of two of the three original series creators (Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman are back, DoubleFine’s Tim Schafer is not). So it is perhaps not surprising that the newest adventure for Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate, is most fixated on his own legacy.

Though the game picks up after the events of Gilbert’s last entry, Monkey Island 2, Return doesn’t attempt to brush the non-Gilbert games out of the canon. It just decides to pick up on an unanswered question hanging in the series’ history. Namely: “What actually was the Secret of Monkey Island?” Despite being the title of the first game, the titular secret was never actually revealed.

So Return follows Guybrush as he’s launched into a race with his constant nemesis, the ghost pirate LeChuck, to uncover the secret with the assistance of former-governor-turned-scurvy-activist Elaine Marley, who happens to also be Guybrush’s wife. Throughout