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| Play it again, Sam, um, I mean, Glottis! |
| Quick Info | |
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| Reviewed by: | Mark Goninon |
| Developer: | Double Fine, Shiny Shoe (original: LucasArts) |
| Publisher: | Double Fine (original: LucasArts) |
| Release Date: | 27 Jan 2015 (original: 30 Oct 1998) |
| Time played: | 13 hours |
The 1980s and 1990s were dominated by two development studios when it came to the graphical adventure: Sierra On-Line and Lucasfilm (later known as Lucasarts). Lucasarts started in the mid-80s developing a few arcade games for early PCs but wouldn't release its first graphical adventure game until 1986: Labyrinth: The Computer Game was a movie tie-in game (yes, that "Labyrinth", the one with David Bowie) designed by David Fox and Douglas Adams (of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame). Unlike Sierra, which was still using text parsers in their graphical adventures, Labyrinth used the concept of "word wheels" which was a precursor to the verb-object system used in later games. The game was a success and would mark the start of Lucasarts's foray into adventure games. Lucasarts would stay in the business of making graphical adventure games for another 14 years and within this short period, many advancements were made. Towards the end of this golden era of graphic adventures, 2D graphics made way for 3D and in 1998 Grim Fandango was released. Despite being the penultimate graphical adventure that the Lucasarts development studio would release (the honour for final graphical adventure goes to 2000's Escape from Monkey Island) it was the first to employ 3D characters and pre-rendered backgrounds thanks to GrimE (Grim Engine).
Grim Fandango was well received by critics and currently holds a Metascore of 94 on Metacritic. The game won many Adventure Game of the Year awards including ones from IGN, PC Gamer, Gamespot and Computer Gaming World. However, critical success did not translate into commercial success and the game sold around half a million copies by 2012, a sales figure Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango's director) said was only about half of the game's predecessor, Full Throttle. Ultimately, Lucasarts cancelled future adventure game projects except for Escape from Monkey Island and Tim Schafer left the company to form his own studio, Double Fine.
Fast forward to 2015 and Double Fine is choosing to remaster its old games starting with Grim Fandango. Grim Fandango Remastered received a positive reception, like the original game but it was slightly lower with a Metascore of 84 on PC. The remastered version of the game included new high resolution textures for the 3D characters, dynamic lighting, revised control schemes (you can actually play the game like a typical point 'n' click adventure), two hours of developer commentary and a totally re-recorded soundtrack with a live orchestra.
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| Grim Fandango takes place on the Day of the Dead |
Kids these days have "Coco". We had Grim Fandango
Grim Fandango is set in a Mexican version of the afterlife strongly influenced by the Day of the Dead. You play the role of Manny Calavera, a grim reaper that also happens to be a travel agent for the Department of Death (DoD). When a person dies in the land of the living, Manny reaps their soul and then organises transportation for them to the Ninth Underworld for eternal rest (this mirrors the Aztec belief that a soul must travel for four years through eight levels of the underworld before reaching their final resting place). How virtuous a life your client led during the living years determines what they're eligible for in terms of transportation. If they lived their lives like a saint, then they may be fortunate enough to take a ride on the Number Nine Train, straight to the Ninth Underworld. Alternatively, they may get to travel by cruise ship or car. For the least virtuous, all they get is a walking stick with a compass and they have to complete their four year journey on foot.
Manny is jealous of his colleague, Domino Hurley, and wonders why he seems to always get the good (virtuous) clients. Manny manages to steal one of his clients called Mercedes "Meche" Colomar, a woman who had led a virtuous life. However, when Manny checks his computer to see what she is entitled to, the computer somehow states she is not entitled to anything. As Manny goes to confront his boss, Meche quietly leaves, resulting in Manny being fired and imprisoned in the parking garage. Feeling guilty about Meche's predicament and wanting to make amends, Manny spends the rest of the game trying to find Meche while escaping those intent on doing him harm.
The unique setting, an imaginative, humorous take on the Mexican Land of the Dead before "Coco" made it cool, is what really makes Grim Fandango stand out when compared to other games. The game also had high production values for its day, including a fantastic soundtrack by Peter McConnell which has received critical acclaim on its own. The soundtrack features a lot of jazz, swing, even Mariachi music (I also like how the soundtrack has throwbacks to previous Lucasarts franchises, like the Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe theme when you come across a blimp). Incidentally, the soundtrack was re-recorded for the remaster, using a live orchestra (the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to be precise).
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| There are some scenes in the game that are empty of things to interact with |
Some QoL Changes but Some Missed Opportunities
Higher resolution graphics for the character models is a welcome addition along with the improved lighting, and the game looks great on the big screen (when playing on the Steam Link) but there is this weird mix of realtime rendered graphics and pixellated pre-rendered graphics for the backgrounds. Unfortunately, the differences are more jarring with the remaster since now there's such an obvious difference between the character models and backgrounds. This also means the cutscenes end up looking way worse than the current graphics too.
As the original game came out in the early days of true 3D games, you have some legacy controls and camera angles that can be a bit frustrating. Using the tank controls can take some getting used to and each time you enter a new scene, the camera angle changes which can be disorientating. Thankfully, with the remaster you can turn off tank controls and play the game similar to a traditional point 'n' click adventure with the mouse, but there is still no avoiding the inventory system that involves cycling through items, and you'll need to use the keyboard to do this.
There are also a lot of empty pre-rendered scenes. On one hand, it gives a good sense of space but there is a lot of unused screen real estate.
Also despite some fixes there are still the occasional graphical glitches (disappearing models) and audio glitches (voiced lines being cut), not to mention the game retains a showstopper bug that even freezes the game if you try to open your inventory in a particular scene.
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| Despite it looking like Manny is reading the letter to the beatniks, he actually isn't. |
Moon Logic and Red Herrings
The golden era of adventure games were rife with "moon logic" puzzles where the solutions are rather convoluted along with very little direction on what you're meant to do. This is especially the case when you make it to Year 2 of the game in the town of Rubacava. A big chunk of the game is spent in Rubacava and to make matters worse, it takes a long time to walk everywhere and figure out what to do. What are you supposed to do with the betting machine? And how does the poetry competition work?
The last question would have a frustrating answer, because it turns out the entire thing is a red herring. And it's easy for that to happen in Grim Fandango due to its controls. It took me two hours to finally figure out that the open mic night puzzle in the Blue Casket club wasn't actually a puzzle at all. You get a choice to say a few random lines of poetry and for veterans of Lucasarts games (Monkey Island in particular) assuming the puzzle was an insult sword fighting puzzle in disguise, isn't that big a leap. There are also a group of beatniks that you're meant to impress. I initially thought that trying to use every inventory item I had on them, including letters from a Revolutionary Leader that would surely work, but alas, when I tried, I just ended up reading the letters despite looking straight at them. What I didn't realise at the time is that despite looking straight at the beatniks, it wasn't straight enough? Consequently, when I tried to show them the letters I actually showed it to thin air. So, my next thought was to impress them with poetry and hence the rabbit hole I dug myself into. In traditional Lucasarts adventure games you can see a sentence forming at the bottom to show what you're looking at or interacting with or sometimes a hotspot would show, but using the traditional tank controls, this isn't the case. If only I was using the Remastered point 'n' click interface at the time!
Anyway, there are many times it's probably best to use the Remastered point 'n' click interface to circumvent many of the issues with the original tank controls since they add an extra degree of difficulty to the game, even before you get around to solving the puzzles!
Rushed Ending
It feels like a good chunk of the game is spent in the first two years of the game, whereas Year 3 and especially Year 4 are rush jobs. There are only a few rooms to visit and it feels like scenes are skipped towards the end of the game. It's a pity since the bones of the story (mind the pun) are good so why not tie some loose ends, provide a bit more epilogue? It has been widely reported that the game suffered crunch towards the end of development and if you play the last few hours of the game, it really shows.
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7
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Grim Fandango feels rushed, buggy and partially incomplete towards the end but this remaster does help alleviate some of the original's issues. If you ever wanted to play a Day of the Dead inspired noir adventure game with a top notch soundtrack and great voice acting, this is the game to play. |
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