Grim Fandango

The Good
I like the humor in the game, some things are laugh out loud, some you may only understand 10 minutes later. The cuts scenes are very good quality, they come quite frequently breaking up the game into smaller segments. Manny's voice - it seems strange but if the main characters voice got on your nerves you would not play, but Manny (main character) is alright, quite pathetic, I sometimes feel sorry for him. The storyline is engaging right from the start, Get a good case in the department of death or your fired! I like the land of the living, it is more surreal than i first thought, you have to see it.

The Bad
Using the keyboard, I never play games like this, finding things in the game world is quite hard. It took a while to get the hang of it, but there is a control menu to help learn them. Getting stuck, once you are stuck you are very likely to stay that way as talking to characters for inspirations certainly does not help unless you need to do something with them directly. Camera angles are very tomb raider style, i got lost in them somethings are hidden from view.

The Bottom Line
It's great, not for a total puzzle game beginner though. Pleasure to the eyes and ears, You need brains and finger dexterity.

The Good
At a time when it seems as if Lucasarts-style adventures were on the way out, 'Grim Fandango' absolutely wobbles with quality. Not so much an adventure as a proper interactive movie, it combines some amusing puzzles with excellent writing and voice acting, and typically surreal Lucasarts humour. What other game allows you to deliver interactive jazz poetry? Featuring an noir-ish storyline set in the land of the dead (a kind of half-way house between the land of the living and the afterlife), you play a supernatural 'travel agent', a man who must seek out the souls of the newly-departed, and sell them travel packages to ease their passage into the next world. Borrowing liberally from 'Touch of Evil', 'Double Indeminity', 'Casablanca' and 'The Maltese Falcon', the game makes the surreal, Mexican-folklore-influenced world work and seem alive, filled with characters who also seem real. A combination of top-notch visual acting and some excellent voicing give the characters life, and even the supporting seem to have had effort put into them. It's light-years away from the awfulness of most computer game acting ('Resident Evil' springs to mind), and should make other games designers feel angry and unfulfilled. There's some great latin music, too, with more pan-pipes than you ever though you would hear in your life. The plot seems to be over all too soon. You can still buy this at full-price in some shops, and it's worth every penny.

The Bad
There isn't much to not like. The odd perspectives sometimes hinder your navigation, and it's too easy to run into walls and slide off when in fact you wanted to go through a door. Furthermore, two of the puzzles require non-obvious pixel-perfect positioning (you'll know them when you get to them). Apart from that, this game is perfect.

The Bottom Line
Excellent modern adventure with a bizarre setting, and alcoholism!

The Good
Grim Fandango is an excellent game, the graphics are so good, and the plot is simply fantastic. If you are an adventure lover, here you will find everything that you ever wanted:graphics? Even the backgrounds seem to be planned until the further details. Story? You will find an excellent plot here, while you help Manny to find the truth in the Land Of Dead. Puzzles? Yes, like in almost every good adventure, there are a lot of things that will make you guess and think to solve them.

The Bad
At first you will find yourself a little frustrated trying to move Manny, but once you get used to it, it will be very easy. And you cannot play it under Windows 2000, unless you download a patch for this SO from the people of Microsoft.

The Bottom Line
Once again, the people from LucasArts surprise us with a game that makes a big step in Adventure games.