Welp I just finished this (albeit in Original mode) and it was still a lot of fun and quite satisfying to finish, despite all the bugs and problems with getting stuck, crashes and the Remastered Mode just plain not working :)

That is a good mark of the original game's quality: There are few games that have been so annoyingly buggy that I still felt great playing through - The only other one that springs to mind is Planescape Torment (My god that game was buggy, but it was sooo worth persevering)

The commentary along shed a lot of insight into the game, for instance it was funny finding out that one of my fav. characters was based on one of the team!

TBH I've never been one who cares for the modern obsession with graphics; Graphics tend to age the worst, while a good story, good writing and good music are timeless and even playing through in Original mode, I don't feel I'm missing out on too much.

It's good to see that the talent is still there in things like Broken Age, Costume Quest and Stacking (Which are all great games too - Clever mechanics and witty writing! We want more!) - Double Fine just need to balance their creative side with their Getting Shit Done side, then they can... take on the world!

Agreed, even though I can't even *open* the game, because of that ridiculous OpenGL 3.3 requirement, I've been playing my original copy on ResidualVM, while I wait for my girlfriend to come back from visiting her mother in Paris, so we can both enjoy the Remastered edition (her computer fortunately runs the game).

In spite of all the issues, glitches, poor -- or none -- optimization for computers, ludicrous minimum requirements, Grim Fandango is a game that stands the test of time even in its non-remastered form, and it shows how much clever writing, top-notch voice acting, superb sound design backed by one of the best video game soundtracks ever, stellar art direction, engaging characters and a great story that takes place in a well thought-out world scenario more than make up for its old-looking graphics.

And, yes, Double Fine have some of the best people in the business, when it comes to creativity -- it's not easy keeping up with them in that regard --, but they should hire some people that could handle the technical side of things, ASAP, because they're sorely lacking in that department, and it hurts them as a studio. Tim Schafer was a good programmer back in the SCUMM and early LUA days, but those old skills are outdated and not that needed, in this day and age; and if the entire team had to *learn* how to code games in 2D from scratch, when they were developing Broken Age Ep. 1, I think it tells you something clear about what their developing/technical skills are. Not that great, to be sure, and definitely not on par with the creativity the studio is known for.

[EDIT] damned typos!

I agree that despite the bugs and having to tweak settings several times to overcome issues, I still thought it was a very good game. I was new to this game, but had always hoped to be able to play it one day as it consistently is near the top of various lists of great adventure games. I was very happy that the game was made accessible to new players.

The story, characters, dialogue, voice acting and overall style are the strengths of this game, and do not seem dated, at least not to me. It was refreshing to have a game that really has a unique and compelling plot. The puzzles were the weak point. While not difficult to execute once you understood what needed to get done, getting to that understanding was at times challenging. I would never have finished without the assistance of a wallkthrough. In this area the game seemed dated, going back to a time when the norm was to bring game play to a halt while you spent hours working out a solution to a puzzle.

I do plan to play again and listen to the commentary. But I think I will hold off until patches have been issued for the various bugs. I really hope that patches are released soon so those who have been unable to play and complete the game can do so, as it really is a classic.

I think the remaster has been done well, for the most part. It seems to stay true to the original in many ways, perhaps in too many. I have never played the original, but I think the writing, style and bone-dry humour are really well done. Although I have not completed it yet (just arrived in year 3), I have to say that the puzzles, occasional pixel-hunting and terrible inventory controls almost break the immersion. I have used the walkthrough several times now and every time I didn’t feel even a wee bit ashamed of it, either because the solution was well hidden or required too many time-wasting efforts with the inventory that they weren’t worth it anyway. So far I’m feeling very mixed about this game. The graphics and bugs are the least of its problems, in my opinion.

I'm also pretty content with the game.

I just finished the game and 1) didn't have any crash despite running on an unsupported configuration (Linux with AMD OSS drivers) 2) didn't experience "game breaking" bugs or anything like that. Some graphical glitches happened and performance wasn't always stellar, but that's about it.

I looked a bit at the original game with ResidualVM earlier and the remaster is so much better. It's not just the graphics either. Audio is noticeably better, cutscenes look nicer and the interface is much slicker, of course. I also enjoyed the developer commentary and concept art.

There are some things that aren't great though:

1. Like I said, performance. The graphics aren't very special and slowdowns in some scenes (which seem to happen to everyone) aren't really acceptable.
2. Hotspot hunting is annoying. I was stuck at the beaver dam for some time simply because I missed a hotspot. A "show hotspots" function would have been great. I know this from other games like Deponia, so it's not a new concept at all.
3. Point-and-click mechanics do not always work well. In some situations I had to revert to keyboard controls.

Yeah, this game was made for Tank Controls and it really shows!

I always quite liked the tank controls as the whole head-turning mechanic to highlight hotspots was a nice change from waving the mouse around the screen to find hotspots as we used to do in all the previous games!