The International House of Mojo

"Lite" mode wasn't even in MI Madness...

I'm much more upset about other things... the (lack of the) intro for instance....

This is the one change I don't mind so much. It's got a hint system built in now, so there's really no reason for a Lite mode.

Bah, just when I thought LEC finally got a special edition right...
All I wanted out of it were the developer commentaries though so it won't affect my enjoyment.

Thank you Melancholick. I guess I'm ok with that.

Nope, Yllaw. Just the full-on Monkey Mode, with no Lite version.

Do we still get to choose between the "easy" and the "I want all the puzzles" modes?

Here's a review for the iPhone version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF762mwUd8I

Look, the game is brilliant. Yes, the music in Classic Mode is a disaster, but so what? You already own that version of the game. Don't worry, they've done an excellent job.

I agree about Elaine. Just from the videos I really don't like her in MI2. I never particularly liked the CMI version anyway, I preferred the EMI voice whose name I can't remember.

From the 1UP review:
"The game itself is irrelevant to this review."

It's a f***ing game review. That's probably the stupidest comment I've ever heard. If it was a blog I could understand it, but it's the sodding 1UP Official Review. And his comparison of a DVD to a film is stupid, because I've never seen a DVD review start with "forget about the film, let's talk about the extras!"

Having said that...
"In the original game, the ending credits concluded with what might have been the funniest segment: a list of 50 constructive things you could do now that you had finally finished the adventure (such as washing your car, running for president, or having "a yelling contest with your neighbor's dog"). This section -- as with the original opening -- has been eliminated entirely."

Losing the entire opening was bad enough... but this I seriously cannot forgive. That was one of my favourite parts of the game. I'm sorry LucasArts but you've f**ked up bad. Who the hell thought that eliminating some of the best parts of the game were a good idea?

Yeah, I'm not going to be playing the game in classic mode at all. Yes, I might switch back for comparison purposes, but that's it. Sad to hear about the opening sequence, though.

The 1up review isn't a huge upset to me because most of the criticism is with the way the original MI2 is presented in the Special Edition.



I'm pretty sure I'll only be playing this for the HD version, and leave playing "classic mode" to my original version on ScummVM.

But for anyone who wanted to play the SE for its classic mode, that is a huge bummer.

From 1up:

"The absolute worst atrocity in this port is the game's autosave mode. The game automatically saves whenever you manage to accomplish anything in the game -- acquiring an item, opening up a path, and so on, which is a fine idea. Whenever the game autosaves, a little floppy disc icon appears on the screen, which is cute.

However, the presence of that icon makes any text on the screen disappear completely. Meaning that if you want to play the original game with the voices turned off, some lines in the game will never show up on screen. And no, there is no way to turn autosave off, meaning you either play with the new voices or you miss out on some potentially important dialogue."

That IS bad.

"In addition to content being cut, some of what is here is just plain sloppy. The music in classic mode, for example, sounds really bad. This isn't a case of the original MIDI just being outdated, I mean that it is actually broken and wrong. Whatever sound card or emulator or interpreter they used to record the classic mode music does not output the sound as it was originally intended and released, meaning the instruments often sound flat and tired, and the volume levels for individual tracks are all over the place. This is especially noticeable in the graveyard on Scabb Island -- in the original, walking through the entrance caused the bats perched near the gate to screech loudly as they flew away, meant no doubt to cause you to jump. In Special Edition, their squeaks are barely noticeable, buried far beneath the song, making the scene just about meaningless.

This might be somewhat forgiven if we had reason to believe that the game was trying to emulate the MIDI tracks in software, but given the complete absence of iMUSE, I'm inclined to believe that the tracks were literally recorded digitally from an original source, leading me to wonder just what in the hell sound card they were using. They could have done their homework and bought, say, the MT-32 card the soundtrack was written for off of eBay and recorded the tracks as they were intended. Hell, they could have downloaded better tracks off of the internet -- lovely recordings are available on various fan sites, and have been for years now. "

This could end up with murder. Is this true?

1Up doesn't think much of the remake.

*Wag of the Finger*

No complaining about other reviews until the Mojo review is up!