Grim Fandango

The Good
Grim Fandango features a production value higher than almost any game ever made. The story, voice acting, and art are so consistently brilliant that it gives on pause to consider that a game like this could never be made in the current gaming industry. This was a rare gem, a masterpiece of creativity that came at just the right time.

The story is amazingly well done. Tim Burton couldn't have delivered it better with his stop-motion, as the epic saga of Manny Calavera is delivered with nuance and humor. I have played this game numerous times through, and every time I get a little emotional at the end. It's just that well done, and the characters are so alive, even if they're dead.

The art is excellently done, with a variety of styles convincingly executed, albeit all within the overall motif of the game. While the characters themselves are low-res, this is not the result of any lack of vision, but of the technology available, and likely, the monetary support of Lucasarts.

Grim also features the best voice acting I've yet seen in a game. The use of real actors (Manny is voiced by the guy who played El Guapo's sidekick in "The Three Amigos") adds so much to the experience.

The gameplay itself is typical adventure fare, well executed. The puzzles are intelligent, but not overwrought or bizarre. Mostly, they serve to pace the wonderful storyline.

Also, the music was fantastic, featuring a variety of genres and instruments, all composed for the game and featured at precisely the right moment.

The Bad
The control scheme leaves something to be desired, and the puzzles aren't always intuitive. Sometimes you have to bang your head against the wall to come up with a solution to a few of them.

There were some technical glitches that were fixed with a later patch.

The Bottom Line
Grim Fandango is ultimately a story. It is a game which anyone could enjoy, or at least anyone who appreciates storytelling and human drama. It is a story of redemption, and it is beautifully delivered in the format of a video game.

The Good
What an odd name Grim Fandango for a game is. I can understand the "Grim", because of the way all the characters look like little Grim Reapers, but with clothes on. "Fandango" is a Latin-American or Spanish dance, so if someone comes up to you and says "Do the Fandango", you'll know what they mean. And no, the plot is not about all the characters trying to out-perform each other in a dance contest.

After writing a negative review already, I decided to give this game another go. LucasArt's Grim Fandango tells the story of Manuel "Manny" Calavera, a travel agent who is employed by the Department of Death to sell travel packages to the dead on their way to the underworld. Unfortunately, one of his colleagues seem to get the best clients, and he suddenly has a bad reputation for not selling enough packages, and he is on the brink of getting fired from the job.

The game's description says that Grim is a masterpiece, and when I played the game all the way to the end, I can see why. The game is divided into four years, and each one of them contains marvellous 3D graphics. Every time I walked Manny between locations, I noticed how each of them is well designed, particularly the towns of El Marrow and Rubacava, LSA headquarters, the creepy petrified forest, and the coral mines where slaves do nothing but make lightbulbs for a living. The objects themselves look beautiful, and those that I found interesting to gawk at include the blimp that flies stationary over Rubacava (Too bad you cannot enter it.), the submarine and the octopus that guards it (The octopus looks scary as he keeps a close eye on you wherever you go.), and, most of all, the Number Nine train that carries people to the underworld.

The music and sound effects are nice. Most of the music inside the game is a combination of Spanish- and Mexican-style music. I prefer not to listen to this type of music, but I must say when a piece plays somewhere in the game, they reflect the situation that you are in, whether it is a love scene or running away from someone.

You control Manny's actions by using the keyboard to walk around and pick up and manipulate objects, and you will use the keyboard a lot. (Sorry, Grim uses LucasArt's new GrimE interface instead of the SCUMM interface used in earlier games, and due to restrictions on using the new interface, mouse support is just not possible). This means that you have to memorize at least ten commands, but they are easy to remember once you examined the help screen.

Whenever you accomplish something that is a requirement of the game, you will often watch a cut-scene. These cut-scenes look a lot detailed than the ones in earlier games, even those in The Dig is no match for those in Grim. And once you have viewed the cut-scene, you have the option of watching it again if it happens to be your favorite.

Like other adventure game should, you have the option of saving and loading games, and you can save as many games as you like and not worry about disk space, since each save game is just under 1MB. Me, not only do I like to save at any location that takes my breath away, but also at places where I could get myself in trouble. What is interesting about saving games is that at the top of the save/load game screens, a part of a painting is created to show you how much of Grim that you have completed. If you have many saved games, including the one where you are one step toward finishing the game, you can use the up and down arrow keys to quickly cycle between saved games to see how the painting is formed piece-by-piece.

There is a little bit of humor in the game. The things that Glottis, your demon partner, does is funny such as when he gets fired from his job and tells Manny that it is like that the DOD reached in and pulled his heart out, he actually does so and toss it in a spider's web, and this makes it rather difficult for Manny to release the heart from the web. Another highlight is going to the cat tracks in the second year and hearing the names of the cats that are competing, with names like "Hairball Surprise", "Smitten Kitten", "Meowy-Wowy", and "Kitty Kitty Bang-Bang".

The Bad
When I first submitted a review of this game, an approver told me "What??? I don't believe this. How could anyone find Grim Fandango boring?" Well, I meant that the game was boring the first time that I played it, but when I played it the second time, I found the game enjoyable. However, it is boring to have Manny take almost a minute to walk across the screen. I ended up holding down the [Shift] key to make him run from one place to the next. In fact, the walkthrough that I used to complete the game encouraged me to run rather than walk.

The Bottom Line
This game's install program has two types of installs: "Small" and "Large". My advice: Don't choose the "Large" option, unless you can wait for it to finish 20 minutes later. Grim Fandango comes on two CDs, but there was no need for the game to fit on a second CD, which is completely useless expect when you are installing the game.

Grim Fandango is a very good game with relaxing music and breathtaking 3D graphics, with a little bit of humor added to the mix, I believe that everyone (kids or adults) will find this game a joy to play.

Rating: ****

The Good
In 1997, LucasArts released, what is considered by many to be it’s finest game, Grim Fandango. From the twisted mind of Tim Schafer. The genius who brought us other gems of gaming such as: Full Throttle, and the recent, Psychonauts. An adventure game harkening back to the days of old. Grim Fandango is a fun and hilarious game. But how does it compare to the classics?

“An Epic Tale Of Crime And Corruption In The Land Of The Dead”

In Grim Fandango, players assume the role of Manny Calavera. He is stuck in between Heaven and Earth, in the land of the dead, a sort of purgatory. Working for the DOD, or Department Of The Dead, where he takes the recently deceased and sells them travel packages. The more virtuous a soul was in life, the better packages they earn. From a walking stick, to the ultimate, a ticket of the #9. A luxurious train that takes it’s passengers to the afterlife in style.

On one particular Day Of The Dead,( a Hispanic holiday in which deceased family members are honored.) we find that Manny is in a rut. He was once the DOD’s top agent. Now the only clients that he qualifies for were scumbags in life. This only serves to make Manny spend more time in purgatory. (The better clients, and the more # 9 tickets an agent sells, the quicker they can move on to heaven or hell.) On this fateful day Manny meets Meche. When he cannot find a good travel package for her, she wanders off. Manny then begins to uncover a conspiracy to steal the tickets of honest souls, and use them to gain wealth. From here Manny will set off on a four year journey, to find Meche, and set things right.

Manny: “I’m gonna go. That sound makes me want to kill someone.” Clown: “You two?”

The world of Grim Fandango is a very unique and interesting one. The sights and sounds are inspired by Aztec and other Hispanic design. The land of the dead looks interesting. And is filled with many wacky characters.(My favorite side characters is the Angry Clown, you meet in Year One;) And the inhabitants of the world seem real due to the excellent graphics and voice acting.

The script is also well written. And filled with jokes. Humor is often hard to pull of in a video game, but in Grim Fandango, it is pulled of every time.(I suspect that Tim Schafer got his comedic timing down during his years writing for the Monkey Island series.)

Most games fail, to make the world seen believable. Grim Fandango does not stumble here.

“Can You See What I’m Smelling?”

The Graphics in Grim Fandango are just as sharp and clean as they were ten years ago. Either with or without a 3D card. As you can set the game to use software rendering.(One of the few games with this option.) The pre-rendered visuals are some of the best of the era. And the often photo-realistic backdrops still look gorgeous.

The polygonal inhabitants of the game look great as well. Better with a 3D card, as it smoothes out the edges, and gives everything a clean look, with no jaggies.

“Ohh Ohh Ohh, Bonewagoooon,” -Glottis, The Bonewagon Song-

The music in Grim Fandango is excellent. The music fit’s the game very well and is inspired. Off the top of my head I can’t think of a track I don’t like. It’s that good.

The voice acting is also excellent. Since timing is so important in comedy. A lot of the funniest parts of the game are thanks to the great voice work of the cast. Some you may recognize from other games/TV shows. The voice acting in this game is better than that of most TV shows(particularly anime) and some animated movies!

“Is it you, or am I you?”-The Collected Poems of Manuel Calavera-

It may disappoint some to find, that the controls of Grim Fandango, are not the standard mouse based.(Therefore, Grim Fandango, is not a point and click, as some have called it.) But once you learn the controls of the game, I think you will find that they are just as good, if not better than mouse based adventure games of old.

You use the directional keys to move around, and scroll through your inventory. There are even quick keys to pull out crucial items, such as a Manny’s scythe.

The controls can also be changed to suit the camera settings. Either camera relative. That is to say fixed camera angles. Or Character relative, which as I am sure you have surmised is based on Manny’s movements. I prefer the camera relative.

The Bad
Well the game can take a bit of work to get it up and running of Windows XP.

And I don’t really care for Year 3. It just felt lacking.

The Bottom Line
“Clambake!”-The Collected Poems of Manuel Calavera-

Grim Fandango is one of the best Adventure games every made. Perhaps the best. It is such a well made game and filled with the most hilarious moments in the history of video games. I love the part in Year 2, when at the beatnik bar you can read poems, the sillier, the better.(And any parody of bad poetry is automatically funny.)

And in the end it is simply one of the best games ever made. Fans of adventure games owe it to themselves to play this one. And fans of games in general.