all games are not created equal

The inclusion of voice acting and some very well done hand-drawn character sprites really made The Curse of Monkey Island (or Monkey Island 3 if you prefer) really make you feel like you're playing a cartoon.

Both games really do great with modern-day humor and 4th wall slapstick.  For example, in CMI, Guybrush fakes his own death, to which a nearby patron says "Strange, I didn't know you could die in these Lucas Arts adventure games".

SMI was instantly a classic and still holds strong in terms of adventure games of old, and it was so clever with it's humor that it stands strong today.  However CMI's similar humor with excellent voice-acting just makes every joke that much funnier.  Insult-sword fighting in SMI was great, but in CMI you get voice acting PLUS the insults have to rhyme.  It's great.

One thing to note is that there's many puzzles in CMI where the solutions don't make since until you just randomnly stumble across it through random clicking.  Then when you finally DO get the solution, you can't help but think "How the heck was I supposed to figure THAT out?"
SMI doesn't have these issues quite as much.

CMI is just incredibly witty and all the characters are just loveable.  Whether it be the barber pirates who'd rather sing than man a ship, or a demonic talking skull, the game is just a joy from beginning to end.

I'm comparing the humor factor between these two games.  I'm also taking into consideration the recently released Special Edition of SoMI.

So I just finished The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (and loved it, btw), so I figured it'd be appropriate to compare this game against what many people claim to be the funniest of the MI series.

So since SE has voice acting, there's no advantage to Curse for audio.  Despite this, I still have to say Curse has the wittier dialogue.

The original didn't have as strong a focus on humor as Curse did.  The first game focused more on the puzzles than Curse, but it still had great humor.  However, it's cast isn't nearly as colorful.  Sure we have the cannibals, but so does Curse.  In fact, the cannibals in Curse return as vegetarians, relying on fruit and tofu.  Hilarious!

Secret also lacks the likes of Murray, who is quite possibly the funniest useless character of a game.  It's very hard to compete with a disembodied motivated evil talking skull, who is not near as menacing as he wishes to be.

This isn't to say that the original isn't worth playing, oh no.  It's fantastic.  But it probably won't make you laugh out loud like Curse can.

(Also, check out Tales of Monkey Island while you're at it.  Jeez I'm a fanboy)

Curse of Monkey Island is generally considered to be the best Monkey Island game by many (I personally prefer LeChuk's Revenge myself).  So how does the new episodic adventure fare in comparison?

Curse was fresh by bringing in higher resolution characters, more lively animation, and voice acting to the series.  It gave a much needed facelift to the series and had pitch-perfect voice-acting that really brought the characters to life.

Tales isn't the first Monkey Island game in 3D, but it's easily more fun and designed better than Escape was.  You get a slew of familiar characters, and a few memorable new faces as well.  The game comes in five episodes, and they are all pretty entertaining.  Guybrush is as charming and occasionally dimwitted as ever, and there's a new spin on LeChuk that's definitely a treat, and even Stan the salesman returns with yet another business prospect under his belt.  The series has been handled with great care and Telltale did Monkey Island justice.

As far as length, Curse and Tales are about equal.  It's hard to judge the length cause everyone's playthroughs will be different.  Some will have harder or easier times on puzzles, and some will spend more time examining every nook and cranny, and exhausting every conversation option with every character.

Tales may look a little dated for today's visual standards, but it still maintains that pirate-y charm and humor that fans have come to expect from the MI series.  That being said, Curse still holds it's own with retro but beautiful 2D hand-drawn visuals that look copied straight out of a Disney film.

Personally, I believe Tales (and Telltale in general) does a better job of pointing out the puzzles that you need to solve, and a general idea of how to go about solving them.  When playing Curse, it sometimes gets so overwhelming that you start wondering around with little sense of what you should be doing.
It's important to note that neither of these games will allow you to die or get stuck to the point that you have to restart your game, so you never have to proceed with caution, so to speak.

I pick Tales over Curse mainly cause it's a fresh take on a long beloved series.  Nothing feels too out of place, the dialogue is as witty as ever, and I personally thought the climax was much better.  The only thing I could fault it for was that there was a key location from the series missing in Tales.  I don't want to give any spoilers, but it's pretty obvious.