Grim Fandango Remastered

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.

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.

Disappointed?!? Then why the 5 stars? Against my personal expectation, I award this game 5 stars because I experienced no issues with game mechanics, story, or presentation of this game. I expected much more from this title because I had read on the internet (so it had to be true, right?) that this game was awarded #1 Adventure Game of all time by an Adventure game publication. This game was FAR from that for me. I enjoyed the original story, comedy, and the puzzles were pretty well thought out and often resulted in some form of hilarity. So, for the record, I did enjoy this game. It was just very shy from blowing me away like I expected it would. Not the developers fault by any means. You can expect an original story in the spirit of Cinco de Mayo design, as you play a grim reaper who you discover to be a struggling saleman trying to sell travel packages to speed good folks travels across the wrought-with-peril land of the dead to thier final destination and work off your time to earn yours. There are memorable characters, plot twists, and clever puzzles. If your an adventure game enthusiast and haven't played this game, you won't regret picking this up, but don't go in with my high expectations. If your looking for fun adventure gameplay with a comedic approach that you can find on GOG, I would definitely recommend Toonstruck and Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail over this title. If you've already played those titles and want some more, take a crack at this one.

The game, story, audio and graphic is a 5 Star. But control is stupid and buggy. Both in the original and remastered version. I remember that in original Manny Calavera had to be controled by keyboard and cursor keys. I thought this to be a crazy concept. And it was. The remastered version now goes back to mouse control (great concept change!!!), but it's just buggy. There are multiple scenes were I got stuck because characters did hang up. And without auto-save this is not funny. For a game you can not die you don't save. But hell, in this game i did save a lot. Sound is great, story is great, Graphics are ok. But it's more or less the same as in the original game. So thanks to lukas Arts to make it in the first place. And some thanks to DFP to port the game to current operation systems.