A good adventure game that stands the test of time but not much more than that.
Over the years I’ve been somewhat fascinated by Lucasarts adventure games. Yet not till long after they have been really out of date. Can’t say I’ve been going through them at a very fast rate though since Monkey Island and Escape From Monkey island have been the only ones I’ve beat till now. Grim Fandango had a very unique premise even if I didn’t have a good way to play it till the remastered edition came out a few years ago. Like always I’ll quickly summarize what's going on in the land of the dead first.
Manny Calavera is a down on his luck grim reaper that can’t seem to book a saint on a one way trip to the after after life. But because he isn’t very patient he decides to make his own luck by stealing a peak at a note meant for a fellow salesman Domino who gets all the good cases. He manages to snag Mercedes but a problem arises that she doesn’t seem to have a ticket on the express train. From this point the tale of a 4 year journey to discover what is really going on starts.
From a gameplay point of view this revised edition does make getting around a bit easier since you can use analog control instead of tank controls. Since this plays like a standard adventure game where you need to go around picking up objects to use elsewhere it’s nice when you don’t have to fight the controls. Like many adventure games the puzzles can be rather cryptic sometimes.Or in the case of the grinder it is possible to not be able to finish the game is you interact with it before doing the thing you have to do. Which really seems like something that should have been fixed. But in general the flow of the game goes on at a fairly good pace other than year 2 which has a bit too much to explore.
As for the remastered elements the addition of developer commentary gives the player a reason to replay the game if they are curious about certain elements. Graphic wise it is just a sharper looking version of the original. While the sound work got a overhaul so it doesn’t sound quite as grungy as before. They’ve really just made it playable on modern devices which is never not a good thing.
What Grim Fandango does so well since set up a fantastical world made up of skeletons that seems to be stuck in a film noir setting. Seeing the next unique environment or character is the reason why it’s worth playing this game. The setting is nice but it didn’t quite make me laugh at all. Plenty of smiles to go around but the humor didn’t quite hold up that well. Playing this a bit sooner may have upped my enjoyment but at the current time this just seems like a good but not amazing adventure game. Certainly still worth playing for any fan of this type of game.