Something's rotten in the land of the dead, and you're being played for a sucker. Meet Manny Calavera, travel agent at the Department of Death. He sells luxury packages to souls on their four-year journey to eternal rest. But there's trouble in paradise. Help Manny untangle himself from a conspiracy...
Something's rotten in the land of the dead, and you're being played for a sucker. Meet Manny Calavera, travel agent at the Department of Death. He sells luxury packages to souls on their four-year journey to eternal rest. But there's trouble in paradise. Help Manny untangle himself from a conspiracy that threatens his very salvation.
One of the most acclaimed adventure games of all time is now back, better than ever. Grim Fandango's epic story of four years in the life (or death) of Manny Calavera, travel agent to the dead, has been remastered to look, sound, and control even better than when it won GameSpot's Game of the Year award upon its original launch. Grim Fandango still stands as a classic of the genre, with unforgettable characters and unique combination of film noir and Mexican folklore.
Grim Fandango Remastered includes:
Repainted, hi-res character textures
New, dynamic lighting
Classic score re-recorded with a full live orchestra
This game, despite being critically acclaimed, was reduced into a state of abandonment.
In fact, when I first heard of the game and wanted to play it, I considered going through so many hoops just to get my hands on the classic game. Which even then was not guaranteed to run on modern systems. Luckily for me, and the rest of the community this game is given new life for anyone to play. In its current form it is a priceless experience. And I'll never forget the important precedence this game represents. Maybe you won't like the puzzles, or the pacing, but I've personally never felt connected to a piece of software. Manny is the coolest. The cast is vibrant. The writing pristine. The Art Deco design. The soundtrack. There's nothing in the industry quite like it. Just keep this in mind if you ever decide to buy it and play it for yourself. The game was almost completely lost to time. Cut a slice of gaming history.
Grim Fandango is in my opinion the best game ever made. The story, characters, and dialogue are the pinnacle of Lucasart's adventure games. It manages to legitimately elicit emotions from the player and stays with you long after the ending. The game's art direction is so good in combining film noirs with Mexican folklore that it manages to make 1998 graphics seem fresh even today and it also features one of the best game soundtracks ever, featuring some excellent big band and mariachi tracks. The voice acting is top-notch and along with the witty writing creates some lasting quotes. Lastly, the puzzles are actually fun, most of them provide the right amount of challenge, and although some moon logic is still present it is almost nonexistent.
The remaster on the other hand is decent. The main advantage of it is the orchestral rendition of the soundtrack, which is truly something else and worth buying separately. The main problems with the game when it was firstly released were the bugs and controls. The remaster gets rid of the horrible tank controls and brings a more conventional point n click interface which is great. On the other hand, the bugs still remain, and at times even interfere with the point n click interface. Moreover, although the developers have improved the models' resolution, the backgrounds have remained the same and at times it becomes a bit distracting. It is possible that some of those original background assets were so over-compressed that they couldn't be salvaged so they went with keeping them the way they were.
More playtesting was definitely needed to remove some of the bugs and optimize the new control scheme but even as it stands, it is still the best version of the game out there.
I must say that this review is put together in a hurry and focusing mainly on the remaster and less on the game itself. I haven't played the original game, however, and also didn't care to try to play this version with the original controls or graphics, so I can't make a direct comparison, but some improvements, mainly when it comes to the controls, are so obvious and important that I don't even want to think about needing to play the game without them.
Starting from there, the fact that point and click controls were introduced in this version made the game playable as far as I'm concerned. I don't know how somebody initially thought it was a good idea to make the player need to slowly move Manny all around, try to figure out what he was looking at and hope to avoid missing anything, but at least they came to their senses for this version. Or they partially came to their senses, but more about that later.
The other immediately noticeable improvement has to do with the graphics. For those who want to compare, switching between the original look and the enhanced one can be done at any point, with the press of a button, but graphics aren't such an important aspect for me and, as one of the bits of commentary also mentions, the game's art style actually suits those early 3D graphics in a way that very little else does. And the sound is another aspect that was handled well to begin with, the music being perhaps best described simply as being truly fitting, and the voice acting actually being great; no complaints from me about either. In addition, and in fact more importantly, the dialogues, characters and overall story are quite good. Wouldn't say great, this is no Planescape: Torment or Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, for example, but Grim Fandango may well be one of the better games from these points of view as well, all of these aspects put together also meaning that it may well be one of the better ones when judged on its artistic merits in general.
Unfortunately, I can't maintain this good opinion when it comes to the gameplay, even in this edition. I already said that, from my point of view, the original game was nearly unplayable, but they could have improved it further in this version by adding a proper inventory, and maybe also a way to highlight what you can interact with, though the point and click controls admittedly make this only an optional helpful feature. A journal would have definitely been useful, however, the dialogue transcript being a poor substitute, its role being at most to add a slow and tedious way to partially compensate for the fact that you can't repeat dialogues in case you forgot something, or missed it in the first place.
On that topic of knowing what to do, there may be fewer examples of Moon logic than adventure games tended to be infamous for, possibly also in part just because there is no proper inventory system, and there are some parts of the game where there isn't that much you can do, so a bit of trial and error should be enough even if the puzzle makes little sense or you forgot what you should be doing and obviously don't have a journal to use to remember. At other times, however, the solution makes no sense and simply trying everything may not be a realistic option, year two probably being the most confusing overall, considering the number of locations, characters and items you may end up carrying at once, and the fact that it seems some context is missing early on, and possibly later as well, if you don't quite do or find some things in the intended order. Still, while I did need to read the full solution for one year two puzzle as well, when Manny needs to get strip searched, the one that struck me as the worst, simply impossible to either figure out or stumble upon the correct solution on your own, was in year one, to find the key for the way to Rubacava, the fact that the commentary recognizes it as a problem being little comfort.
Since I got to the commentary, it was quite messy, difficult to follow at times. They should have taken some care to speak better, and maybe more to the player than to each other, and at times even over each other or more or less to themselves. The fact that the text is often a bit faster than the speech only makes it worse, and you can't hurry it along either, just reading the text faster and skipping to the next line when you're done, that function not working on the commentary. In addition, there are quite a number of commentaries with tiny trigger areas, easy to miss if you don't make sure to step in pretty much every possible spot, and at least one place, when you get to the Florist in year four, where just playing the game normally is likely to lead to completely missing some commentary, as well as some of Manny's comments about what he sees, since you can't get back there. Otherwise, I personally liked that the commentary at times provided hints, but can see how many would dislike that as well, so there should have perhaps been a way to enable and disable such spoilers.
It struck me as odd when I spotted some wrong names in the transcript of a few of the first year two commentaries, and then there was the time when the commentary icon briefly appeared at the end of the car ride to the final area, when I doubt that pressing the commentary key would have worked during a cutscene even if I'd have managed to react in time. But those are tiny issues and I just mentioned them to connect the part about the commentary to this one about bugs, the important ones having to do with running to some things you can interact with or even to some area exits, which can sometimes require reloading or even forcing the game to close, and perhaps even more notably with manipulating the crane's chain in year three, the game hanging multiple times until it finally allowed me to get past that puzzle and freezing the display as it did so, so it's a good thing I knew how to "blindly" force it to close. As for other smaller problems, there are a number of objects that don't have point and click controls, though they all seem to be objects Manny will only comment on, not any that can actually be interacted with, and also a few cases where such controls seem to have been added where they shouldn't have been, clicking one such object causing Manny to move to another, though this again doesn't interfere with any puzzles.
Overall, when it comes to the artistic aspects, the story, characters, dialogues, acting, music and art style, Grim Fandango was a good game to begin with, and this version retains those aspects and also adds graphical improvements, which can be toggled on and off at any time with the press of a button. However, I don't even want to think about having to play the game with the original controls, so I'll once again stress that, from my point of view, the point and click controls added in this version simply make it playable. There are other improvements which should have been made and weren't, and a handful of bugs that weren't fixed or were even added in this version, but changing the controls means it can be played as it is, and those positive aspects can be enjoyed. That's not to say that it can't still be frustrating at times because of puzzles that make too little sense or, in a few cases, are pretty much impossible without a guide, but probably less so than most adventure games.
This is how you make a point n click adventure game, it's the pinnacle of storytelling with great soundtrack, voice acting and an amazing art style. This is definitely one of the best games from LucasArts and it's sad that we'll never see anything like it ever again, despite Tim Schafer still being in the game making business.
In the story you follow Manny, a salesman for the Department of Dead, offering travel packages to the otherworld for dead souls. However during the story he unravels corruption, conspiracies and crime after a certain client disappears on him. He goes out to find her and during this adventure he meets both new friends as well as enemies.
Gameplay-wise it's a perfected point n click. The remaster really fixed the clunky controls from the original game, making it even better to experience. There's still some annoying puzzles and timing sections, but it's doable despite some puzzles still having the classical issue of arbitrary solutions.
This game is a truly 11/10 and is recommended for all point n click fans, especially if you like the earlier works from LucasArts!
I think I encountered 2 clear graphical glitches during my playthrough and neither prevented me from advancing in the game so bugs? Like always, some encounter them some don't.
I read a review of the game back in 1998 when it was released but I was just a kid, with no money and no PC of my own and I wasn't able to get the game. Later when I finally had my own PC I tried to find a copy of the game but for some reason this "legend" had vanished from the face of the earth. So you can understand how excited I was to hear that a remastered version was released.
I feel that the game is overhyped / just like with everything, the fans exaggerate. It is a nice, fun point'n click adventure game where you neither point nor click. If you like those, get it if you don't you'll probably not like this one either.
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