I'd never played a Monkey Island game before playing this one but after finishing this game I wish I had.
I'm not a PC gamer, I'm a PlayStation guy. I bought this game for the PS2 (My understanding is that this version is virtually identical to the PC version.) The only games of this type that I had played before are the Broken Sword games for PS1 (which were also excellent) so I can only compare this to them.
Escape from Monkey Island (EMI) is a lot more lighthearted than Broken Sword 1 & 2 (BS1&2). Although there is an element of humour in the Broken Sword games this game is full of it. At times, BS1&2 became tedious, especially during the long, serious life stories of slow-talking characters. EMI is never like that. The conversations are not always short but they're always snappy and interesting.
Not having played a MI game before the whole "I wanna be pirate. Aargh!" sort of vibe was new to me. It was thoroughly infectious though. I loved the overall style of the game and the portrayal of the characters (which were superbly acted). This game is lot more madcap than BS1&2. You can carry a bizarre array of things around with you, all kept neatly in your pants, including a chest, a duck and a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle!
In BS1&2 you could talk to any character about any object you carried and the character would respond with some relevant comment. Although this is realistic, from a gaming point of view it became tedious after a while because every time you picked up a new object or did something new you felt obliged (for completeness, and sometimes necessity) to ask everybody about it and every time you met a new person you felt you had to show him your whole inventory. The vast majority of the time you would just get some dull, useless comment. EMI goes to the opposite extreme where, in general, you cannot show an object to someone unless it is the solution of one of the puzzles in the game, even when it might seem relevant. For example, I pick up a note "to Herman" written by Jo-Jo Junior. Surely it's not unreasonable to show the note to Jo-Jo or Herman and have him comment on it. If I try to "use note with Jo-Jo" all I get is the standard "I don't think he'd like that" response. I think that somewhere between BS1&2 and EMI would be a better level of object/character interaction.
There were many in-references in this game that I missed out on not having play a MI game before. These included odd references and comments in the dialogue and also recurring characters such as Murray, Stan and Herman. Although I felt I missed out on some of the humour by not being able to identify with some of these references the game is completely self-contained and I didn't feel my progress through the game was hampered.
There were a few niggling technical annoyances in this game. You will often enter a doorway or exit point just by walking too near it. Very annoying given the loading times between areas. Especially when you walk into a room and accidently walk straight back out of it again. Also, as the camera angle changes, the new angle is sometimes from the opposite side. If, for example, you walk left to move to new a camera shot, in the next shot you may need to move right to continue in the same actual direction. But you're still holding left, which just moves you back to where you before. But you're still holding left so you move into the new area again. Etc. Etc. Ad nauseum. This is annoying but just a niggle.
Compared to BS1&2 this game seems very short. I wouldn't say it's any easier or harder but it just didn't take me very long to complete. Maybe this is because of the more succinct dialogue in this game. I don't know really.
Overall, I think I'd rather have a Monkey Island game than a Broken Sword game. Both are great games but I think this, along with other Monkey Island games I believe, is just more fun. And that's what it's all about.
