If you’re a point-and-click aficionado, then Grim Fandango should prove a comfortable challenge. This can be frustrating, and I will admit to consulting a guide on a few occasions when I felt completely lost. At times, puzzles are not completely logical, or you accidentally discover the solution to one before you fully understand what you’re doing. In true 90s adventure game style, Grim Fandango is filled with useful items to find and hours of head-scratching when you try to determine what they’re used for. When trying to solve puzzles, however, figuring out what to interact with is a complex task. There’s plenty of optional dialogue you can find by examining and interacting with certain items too, so exploring is worthwhile. Grim Fandango has a subtlety to its humour that sets it apart from its contemporaries, such as Monkey Island, but it’s no less amusing to experience.
They’re supported by a delightfully witty script, filled with laugh-out-loud moments, fun one-liners, and plenty of giggling. Every character has an important role to play, sometimes more than once, and this creates a living world where it feels like everyone really lives their own lives… well, deaths. Early on in the game, for example, Manny packages a recently deceased man for shipping with a complementary mug, and he appears again near the end of the game just when that item might be useful. Like many LucasArts games, there’s a relatively small cast of characters, but they tend to make recurring appearances in clever “full circle” ways. Environments are wonderfully varied, from the sleazy port-town of Rubacava to the heights of a snow-covered Aztec train station, and are filled with memorable characters and details. There’s humour to be found through the visuals too: Manny’s scythe dismantles and folds-up, the skull and crossbones on weapons feature flowers (pushing up daisies, as it were), and huge demon Glottis is a sight to behold playing the piano in a white tux. A quick look at the screenshots will show you that Grim Fandango is hardly a technical wonder, even remastered, but beyond the dated graphics lies incredible artistic design and direction. Almost all the characters that appear are skeletons, but they’re often mixed with bright and vibrant colours in an unintimidating, but macabre fashion. Grim Fandango’s themes and designs are heavily based on Mexico’s famous Day of the Dead festival. However, instead of a raise, Manny finds himself wrapped up in a revolution and a four-year journey through the underworld. Convinced there’s a conspiracy, Manny steals one of Domino’s saintly clients in the hopes of a fat paycheck. Unfortunately for him, all the good clients, the ones who would earn him the highest commission, always seem to go to his rival agent Domino. Manny Calavera works as a travel agent for the DoD (Department of the Dead) in order to pay off a debt for the wrongs he committed in life. On the other hand, those who were selfish and treated others poorly might be forced to make their own way on foot across the treacherous underworld. Those who were selfless and honourable in life may be eligible for a ticket on the Number Nine Train, the express route out of the Land of the Dead. While it does feature some upgrades, it’s more or less the same game it was nearly twenty years ago, for better and worse.Įver wonder what will happen to you after you die? In the world of Grim Fandango, the deceased are reaped by a travel agent who then tries to sell them various packages to get them to their final resting place in a faster, more convenient fashion. And the word remaster is key here this is not a port, nor is it a remake. Tim Schafer, who you might know as the head of Double Fine, was a developer on the original release and has now led the team behind the remaster. If you haven’t heard the title before, Grim Fandango was a classic LucasArts adventure game from the 90s, back when the genre was in its heyday. Grim Reaper/Underworld Travel Agent Manuel “Manny” Calavera utters the above line once in the game and, in doing so, unintentionally summarises Grim Fandango Remastered perfectly. “This deck of cards is a little frayed around the edges, but then again so am I, and I’ve got fewer suits…”
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