Overview

Something’s afoot in the land of the dead…

You play Manuel (Manny) Calevera, someone working his time before his soul can be atoned for – something like that, anyway – your character doesn’t actually know what he’s done wrong. Manny works for the agency that provide the transport package for the newly dead on their 4-year journey to wherever they’re going… the more good they did in their lives, the better the package they can “buy”… Things aren’t going his way, and at first he thinks it’s simply a bad clientele – but he soon learn that there’s a far more sinister reason…

Coming from LucasArts, Grim Fandango is a 3D graphical adventure game. I’d heard many good things about it, and having enjoyed so many of their previous adventure games (particularly Zak McKraken and the Monkey Island series), I have very high hopes for this game. The question was, would I be disappointed?

Read on to find out…

First Impressions

The game begins with a fairly long cut-scene (animated sequence that advances the story but during which the player does not play the game, just watches), which gives a good impression of the humour used in the game. It’s a good plot, interesting and surreal, and the humour comes across as a mixture of the surreal and noir. It’s very funny stuff.

The interface is a little tricky at first, but not too hard to get into. More of which below…

Interface

The interface is keyboard-controlled, a la Escape from Monkey Island. Cursor keys to move your character, insert to bring up the inventory, enter to interact etc etc. Personally I still prefer mouse-control but this works okay. Instead of the usual method of the name of an object being displayed if you can interact with it, or the hugely frustrating (just let the player click on everything to see what he can interact with and what is simply scenery), Grim Fandango takes a novel approach: when you walk past an object that can be interacted with, your character’s head turns towards the object. This takes a bit of getting used to and can be quite frustrating at first as you hit enter just after your head’s turned away from what you were intended to look at / use, but after a while it works very well.

Difficulty

Some of the puzzles are a tad on the obscure side, and even some of the early ones vexed me to the point of looking up a hint guide on the net. I hate having to do that, particularly when all I can find is a walkthrough and have to try only to see the answer to what I’m stuck on without seeing anything else that might spoil later parts of the game! Well this only happened once to me (so far at least!), but then I am a fan of the genre and would hope that my puzzle-solving abilities are above average – and of course the wife normally works out the ones I can’t… :-O

I feel it’s maybe a little too difficult – especially for those not used to this type of game (you have to develop a certain mindset) - you don’t want to complete a game within a few days (unless of course you’re playing it non-stop during the waking hours – well you can’t have everything!), but on the other hand being unable to progress due to one troublesome puzzle isn’t any fun. But, I have to admit, you always see the logic in a puzzle once you’ve seen the answer – no matter how impossible it was for you to work it out for yourself!!

Aesthetics

The graphics are “art-décor and Aztec-inspired”. This describes it pretty well – the graphics are suitably surreal and very colourful, and are nicely detailed. They can occasionally get slightly blocky in close-up mode, but this doesn’t detract from the gameplay. Some of the backgrounds are truly beautiful – more so than in any other game I’ve seen.

The animation is generally excellent, with the lip-synching among the most impressive I’ve ever seen. When cut-scenes end the animation completely and abruptly stops, somewhat disconcertingly – I kept thinking the computer’s crashed!

These are minor points, though – there’s a real atmosphere to the game, and in a large part this is due to the graphical style, music (there’s just occasionally a real whiff of Monkey Island about the music, but it’s all in its own style), sound effects, and the typically brilliant voice-acting.

Options

As you would expect, everything is fully customisable – characters’ speech can be text only, speech only, and text speech, hardware acceleration can be turned on or off, multiple save slots, in-game help mode for when you forget the controls, etc etc. All you could possibly want.

Compatibility

Though it’s fairly old and thus has quite low system requirements, it works fine on Windows XP. It only requires a 2Mb graphics card and supports numerous cards. It works fine on my GE Force 4 even though it doesn’t specifically state the it supports Nvidia cards. The version I played was packaged in the typical “er, just why did they use this large a box?” box, but it’ll be out on budget now, which means a smaller box. But never mind all that, it’s not the box you’ll be playing…

Will You Still Be Playing it in 6 Months’ Time?

Hard to say. If you’ve used a walkthrough then no, but then that’s your own outlook. If you struggle through the game yourself then probably, but if you absolutely refuse to use any hints then you may find yourself giving up out of sheer frustration, especially if you’re not used to this sort of game.

Overall the longevity is quite good, and even if you complete it you may go back to it later for the humour.

Is it Worth the Money?

Yep. I don’t think it’s the absolute epitome of adventure gaming, but it’s pretty darn close. If you like this sort of game you’ll like this, although the interface may take a while to get used to. If you’re new to the genre, this would be a nice introduction to it. A five star game? I pondered long and hard over this, as that would make it better than Escape from Monkey Island. In the end I think yes, it is better and it is 5-star game – the originality, inventiveness, and wittiness of the game make it one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played for a long time.

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Final Ratings

Graphics: – 88% - not perfect, but generally good, always atmospheric, and excellent animation, beautiful backgrounds

Sound: – 95% - excellent in all departments, and the voice-acting is particularly good

Playability: - 82% - not really enamoured of the interface but it does its job reasonably well. A bit too difficult in places.

Longevity: - 78% - depends on your patience to a large extent.

Replay Value: - 81% - better than most adventure games as it’s so funny and atmospheric.

Value For Money: - 88% - if you like adventure games, this one will keep you playing for long enough and enjoyably enough to be well worth the money.

Overall Rating: - 88% - An excellent game, if you like adventure games it should be in your collection.


Other LucasArts Graphical Adventure Games

The Monkey Island Archives (Monkey Island 1, 2, and 3)

Escape From Monkey Island (Monkey Island 4)


See also: Top 100 Games of All Time (part 4)


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My Top Ten Commercial Graphical Adventure Games



Recommended: Yes