Grim Fandango Remastered

The game, but also the art anf the music. Peter McConell is best.

I consider most LucasArt Adventure games classics, but this is not that. This is one of the MOST OVER-RATED games from the 1990s. Many people forget that it did not do as well as other LucasArt games from the same time period. The game has a lot going for it (namely Music, Dialoge and voice acting) but some of the puzzles contain such large degrees of confusing moon logic that you might as well just save your time and watch the walkthrough on YouTube. This really probably should have been a movie anyways. Some areas feel much less polished than others, for example the largely empty "Petrified Forest." People complaining about graphics are knuckleheads... it looks fine. OTHER than the fact that it is a unpopular 3D Polygon style that was the fad at the time and the character design is a bit jarring & strange. The puzzles are the real problem.

Before I begin my review, I have some bone to pick. I had hughe troubles even getting this one to run, because the installer is broken. It looks for a file that isn't there in the temp folder, so you have to rename one of the extracted files to the actual file name the installer is looking for. Seriously? On with the review: This game is one of the old classics and it shows why Lucas Arts was one of the best developer studios during their time. However, just like the orignal, the remake suffers from some flaws. The 3D environment sometimes makes navigating Agent Calavera a horrible mess. You want him to move to a specific spot but you can't, because something is blocking your path and you cannot figure out what it is. The inventory just wasn't a good choice by the game designers, it's only possible to view one item at a time, so you constantly have to cycle through all the stuff to select the right thing at the right time. Also, Glottis is just annoying as hell, he's way too loud when he's on the screen and does his race car impressions ("VRRRROOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!"), I had to turn on subtitles and turn off the sound every time he was on screen. However, where this game shines is the story and the humor. Even though the story about love interests and corruption isn't exactly new, the presentation surely is. Playing in the Land of the Dead sure is something new and despited the mentioned flaws, this game definitly is worth playing if you are into adventure games.

For some reason, I don't remember much about the first time I played 'Grim Fandango'. I remember bits and pieces of it, especially the first and second acts, but much of third and fourth acts were a blur. What I remembered most from playing 'Grim Fandango' was how frustrated I was with the tank controls and running into invisible walls. My unremarkable experience of playing 'Grim Fandango' made me very hesitant about buying 'Grim Fandango Remastered', even though I’ve really enjoyed Double Fine Production's remastering of 'Day of the Tentacle'. I'm glad I took a chance on this game because it is much better than I remembered it to be. First of all, the tank controls are now optional because you can now play the game using only the mouse, making navigation and giving action commands simpler. The inclusion of the mouse control was so seamless that it feels like it was there all along. I've also come to appreciate the creativity, cinematic homage and dry humour in 'Grim Fandango Remastered' now that I'm older and wiser. The writing was sharp, and voice acting was spot-on and natural. (The only voice acting performance that stood out like a sore thumb for me was that by Pamela Segall, who used the same voice for one character as she did for Bobby in 'King of the Hill'.) The remastering of graphics was subtle, mostly on the lighting of characters, character modelling, and textures. The score was also redone, making the jazzy soundtrack more sonically appealing. It's too bad that Double Fine couldn't go back and re-render the backgrounds so they will look sharper to achieve that full remastered look. 'Grim Fandango' is truly the last of LucasArts' great adventure games, and I'm glad Double Fine has remastered it to run on this generation of PCs and gaming consoles. Great games such as this need to be preserved and updated, so that the next generation of gamers can easily play and appreciate them in the years to come.

Probably better suited for a cartoon?