Got to disagree with you.
Played in the order
2, 3, 4 and then 1 and I still think 3 is the best and 4 sucks COMPLETELY 100%...
4 is not a game for the avarage adventure gamer atleast. You bash 1 and 2 for illogical puzzles but you fail to mention 3 and 4 do also have their share amount of illogical puzzles. Monkey Island 4 adds silly stupid action sequences (not fun like Fahrenheit...was that advised already?) and annoying controls.
Don't tell me you found the parfum/house of the thief name machine/giving the beach guy (what was his name again) his name back etc. were at ANY way logical...
Therefore MI4 lacks the Humor that the first 3 do posses.
Please call some puzzles from MI and MI2 (Adventure's Mode, the easy mode I could even finish even if I was 10 when I played it...) that are "nuicanses in modern games"
And just to mention it; I tried it for you and MI3 works perfectly under XP. Some graphical distortion if you exit the F1 menu or skip a cutscene, but nothing ingame that seems to malfunction...