So Blonde won't blow your mind away with brand-new formulas, it'll win you over with its attention to classic elements.
The game is a product of the minds responsible for the first Broken Sword, but within the first hour, you can tell it exhales of Monkey Island. There's the cheeky, adult and at the same time incredibly silly kind of humor that made the LucasArts game a world beater, present throughout the lengthy gaming experience. From well placed humorous dialogues to hundreds (yes, hundreds) of hillarious in-game references to popular culture (Marx Brothers painting, a portrait of LeChuck at the Inn, a Wizard of Ozz-inspired Mount Rushmore, 42 - the ultimate answer from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), it's a game that rewards the gamer not only for his in-game progresses, but to how finely tuned he is to the world of cinema and literature. That, mixed with a plot that it's as ridiculous (in a good way) as it is fun and well thought off, make these first elements the pillars of a successful adventure game.
Graphically, the game takes the well know and successful formula of old Adventure giants such as Broken Sword and Runaway 1 and 2, mixing hand-drawn stunning scenarios and 3D characters, with in-game cut-scenes and well-placed mini-games that provide a nice variable to the huge number of inventory-based puzzles. The characters, by the way, are some of the highlights of the game. Each feels unique, and it's rare nowadays for a game with such high number of characters to make each and every one of them memorable, to the point you'll never find yourself thinking "Which one was that, again?"
The amazing voice-acting is a big factor for the character's success. Not only are they incredibly diverse, but each character's voice is able to stretch itself in a manner only found on the Monkey Island series... that all-too-familiar simple, serious sentence that carries a ton of humor. Usually the BGM is only singled out when it interferes, negatively, with the game itself. On this game, it can be singled out for blending perfectly with the scenario and voice-acting to form an unique feel that's incredibly rare in recent games. In fact, the sound of 'So Blonde' is yet another thing that made me remember the good old days of Monkey Island 3.
On a last note, you have the dumb blonde girl. Sunny Blonde, the most charismatic in-game character to arrive in the PC for quite some time. While at first you'll figure her for a Legally Blonde-esque character, you'll find out that her eternal struggle with her own intellectual shortcomings is quite possibly the most remarkable aspect of the game. It's fantastic for a character to grow so much into the gamer's book not only by its wit and charm, but by its difficulties and limitations. When commenting that "She does not read anything that doesn't have Harry Potter on the cover", she grows not only with Potter fanatics, but also with those not quite the fans, such as myself, for the sarcastic, deeply ironic meaning behind each and every one of her sentences.
So why isn't it a perfect 10? Well, for all its brilliant attention to old formulas, it still sticks to one above all: item hunting. And while I frankly have nothing against that, it's incredibly hard to find items when they do not stand out from the hand-drawn scenarios. One single book in the middle of a bookshelf? A rope you can't even see, or strands of hair in the middle of a fountain, or gravel in the middle of a pond? These are items you'll most likely miss unless you go over each point of the scenario with your cursor. Also, the ending is not nearly what I would expect from a game that steadily grew in my concept, minute after minute.
Not a perfect ten, but the closest an adventure game has ever been to that since the giants of Gabriel Knight, Broken Sword and Monkey Island. If you're an adventure game, this is a 'must own'.