LOVE? LOVE IS FOR THE LIVING.
"It's just a funny game about skeletons, it couldn't possibly make me cry!" That's what I was thinking too, but trust me, the story of this game is one of the best I've seen in a video game. Taking place in the Land of the Dead, where souls departed from life must take a 4 year long journey to the 9th Underworld. Or at least, most souls do. Depending on how you acted in life, you may have a ticket to the No. 9, a literal fast track to eternal rest. We play as Manny Calavera, a travel agent indebted to the powers that be, sells said tickets and other ways of speeding up the long walk to lost souls. Well, he was selling tickets, now the most he can hope for is to undersell some schmuck a fancy walking stick. After two worthless clients, Manny decides to take things into his own hands, and steals a client from his office rival Domino. She's an absolute saint of a soul, an easy No. 9 Ticket sale... or not? Manny fails to get her a ticket, his scheme gets found out by the higher ups, and worst of all, his client is racked with guilt and starts her 4 year walk without so much as a compass. After a quick pris-er, garage escape, Manny sets out to find her and set things right. Teaming up with Glottis, a demon with a love for automated travel, Manny starts his 4 year journey through the Land of the Dead. It takes him to casinos, the sea, the mountains, and even the edge of the world. Anything to find his woman, his Meche, and confess his feel-er, get his job back, yeah that.

So that's out premise, I won't tell you anymore since I do think this game is worth a try. But how does this game play? Well..... it plays alright. Yeah I was dreading this part, see Grim Fandango is a 90's point and click adventure game, and those games are uh... special. It starts out okay, a cutscene establishes this packing foam you need to use to clog a mail machine, you need to hide a balloon under some bird seed so the birds pop it and fly away scared. Those at least make some sense, but then you get the FUCKING. SIGN. PUZZLE. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Okay, sorry, I should calm down. But seriously this puzzle makes no sense, not from a logic standpoint, not from a game design standpoint, not even from a point and click adventure standpoint. You take a sign that looks like it was just part of the background, place it in a random ass spot, and then the sign SPINS AROUND AND OPENS A SECRET GARAGE! WHY? Ugh, sorry. Other than that example, the puzzles are hit or miss (although mostly miss). There are some clever ones, like drinking liquor with gold flakes to set off a metal detector, but there are even more puzzles that make no sense, like entangling a ship's anchors in order to rip the ship in half! (At least the one was kind of a cool moment.) Oh, and don't even get me started on how buggy this game is. In my time playing, I encounted 2 game breaking glitches and 2 crashes. Did I mention the lack of an autosave?

So the gameplay ain't that great, what about the presentation? Oh! It's lovely! The music is chill and fits the game perfectly. The pre-rendered backgrounds look great, although they look a bit out of sync with the actual models. And those models are rather nice, using a stylized look to make up for the lack of polygons allowed at the time. The atmosphere is so good, it made the Land of the Dead feel so alive!

So that's Grim Fandango, a game that left me very frustrated, but a story that had me laughing, scared, and by the end, weeping. I feel a bit bad about dogging on the games amount of bugs, as they basically had to remake the game from scratch, even calling upon the help of fan mod makers. Heh, I guess you could say they brought it back from the DEAD!

I've always wanted to give this game a shot but never found the time. Recently i had a few hours to spare and as soon as i booted the game up I was hooked.

Being a point and click game i won't say too much about the story (no spoilers here) but i loved all the characters, Manny is such a fun protagonist and i love his snarky little digs here and there.

My only "complaint" is some of the Puzzles are way too out there with the moon logic. You know going into a point and click theres going to be some warped logic to figure a puzzle, but i did find myself getting stumped a few times having to resort to a guide, just to put me back on track.

I feel like everyone should experience this game at least once, be that you play it or watch it being played with a friend. Its fantastic, the artstyle is nostalgic (love me those pre-rendered backgrounds) character designs on point.. Ok i'll stop gushing now. Just go play it.

Es evidente que descartaron muchas ideas a mitad de camino y eso hace sentir que al juego le falta "algo más" por mostrar, no obstante, esto no opaca la calidad de la obra final, que con facilidad resulta más original y carismática que cualquier videojuego de la última década. El estilo del ambiente, la música, los personajes y los puzzles en sí mismos muestran esa autenticidad de la que hablo, y si bien parece un juego difícil y a medias, vale totalmente la pena atravesar esta experiencia impregnada de creatividad y mensajes interesantes sobre la vida.

One of the best adventure games ever, when you play with a walkthrough, that is. It has some of the best voice acting, characters, music, atmosphere, design for an adventure game and a story I love. But, even for it's time, the puzzle design reached a new height of ridiculousness. Some puzzles are fun, some aren't at all, and overall it's better to just swallow your pride and have a guide handy.

It's sad that it's impossible to ignore this flaw that would have sunk a lesser game. At the same time, I think it says a lot to the strength of the game's elements overall that it can survive it's main gameplay being flawed.

Sights & Sounds
- As far as remasters go, it seems difficult to work with assets from the blocky early 3D period of the late 90s. Regardless of your skills, you're starting with awkwardly shaped polygons and muddy JPEG backgrounds
- That is to say, this remaster of the LucasArts classic Grim Fandango is visually uneven. The updated textures on the 3D models look pretty nice, but the conversion to 16:9 has stretched the character models a little bit. I probably wouldn't have noticed were I not looking at direct comparisons, but they are noticeably squished. The backgrounds appear to be mostly unchanged, but the lighting and shadows have been heavily revamped. Most indoor parts of the game are far darker than they used to be if there isn't a light source nearby
- The voicework is as spectacular as ever. It was my favorite thing about the game when I played the original way back in the early 2000s, and it's still a collection of standout performances. Manny, Glottis, and Meche are all of course excellently voiced, but even the side characters are great. I still like to parrot the French accent of the roulette table's croupier
- Setting my nostalgia glasses aside, it's evident that the game still looks very dated, and even the remaster doesn't really do much to update it. Thankfully, the strong art direction and setting still look good after all this time. The Land of the Dead and all its Dia de los Muertos inspired populace look great, whether you're milling about your office or trying to hide from monsters at the bottom of the sea
- The jazzy soundtrack is also a highlight, and Year 2's music is particularly great. The less boisterous tracks sound like background music for The Maltese Falcon

Story & Vibes
- The narrative is extremely good; with all the time skips and varied settings you traverse, it actually feels like you're going on an adventure. The plot follows Manuel "Manny" Calavera, a travel agent in the Land of the Dead. In this version of the afterlife, the dead are required to embark on a treacherous journey before their soul can finally move on. The wicked may only get a walking cane to assist them, but the most righteous score a "double-N" ticket for the No. 9, a luxury train that allows them to skip the whole ordeal
- (Skip this bullet if you don't want spoilers for the set-up) Although Manny was formerly a consistent employee-of-the-month, he's recently been outshined by his colleague, Domino Hurley, who seems to be extremely shady and appears to have connections to the realm's seedy criminal underbelly. The plot kicks off after you find that Hector has stolen the ticket of Mercedes "Meche" Colomar, a virtuous soul who spent the majority of her life doing charity work for children. Meche sets off on her journey anyway, forcing Manny to try to track her down on a world-spanning adventure to ensure her path across the land of the dead is safe and successful. Along the way, you'll find yourself in the middle of a huge conspiracy, so you should probably see about tidying that up, too
- One of the highlights of the narrative has to be the variety in the settings you traverse. You'll guide Manny through mundane offices, the tops of tall skyscrapers, spider-infested woods, secret underground tunnels, and beatnick jazz clubs. And that's just the first half of the game
- All the while, you'll be accompanied by the friendly demon, Glottis. In a game full of comic relief, he's the comic relief-iest--a constant source of eye-rolling gags and physical comedy that will probably annoy you at first, but will eventually become endearing. As far as sidekicks go, he's one of the best. I'd place him just a spot below Disco Elysium's Kim Kitsuragi
- There's some great emotional range going on here. In spite of the ubiquity of death and its prominent place in the plot, the humor is constant and often very funny. Corny, but still capable of eliciting some chuckles. In other moments, the game is very contemplative and soulful. As you'd imagine, the fact that there's an afterlife gives you plenty of time to regret your former life's actions

Playability & Replayability
- Although LucasArts point-and-clicks had traditionally been fixed camera, front-on, 2D affairs, Grim Fandango was their first departure from that perspective. Unfortunately, expanding to fill a new dimension came with some growing pains, specifically in terms of how you navigate. Like early Resident Evil games, LucasArts opted for tank controls as your main mode of locomotion. These have always been annoying, and it wasn't any better in Grim Fandango. Luckily, the Remaster only features these as a settings menu option, but note that you'll need to endure them if you want to 100% the game. Turn them on before leaving your office at the beginning if you want to suffer for that unlock
- Due to playing so many point-and-clicks over the years, I have a high tolerance for unintuitive or seemingly random puzzle solutions. That said, Grim Fandango is obtuse enough in this regard to test a saint's patience. I was able to remember many of the more ridiculous solutions from the original, but I still had to consult a guide. The GameFAQs walkthrough I used was published in 1998, and part of me wonders if it's the same one I used back in middle school
- Retreading these puzzles has given me a bit of a new perspective: they're largely bad. The setting, art, and story of Grim Fandango may all be world-class, but the puzzles are nonsensical even by LucasArts standards. If you insist on beating this one blind, be prepared to not know what you're supposed to do roughly 95% of your playthrough
- If you can stomach the gameplay, this is definitely a game worth replaying. Maybe it's the nostalgia talking, but Grim Fandango's narrative, characters, and art design basically guarantee that this will be a game I come back to every now and then

Overall Impressions & Performance
- It's a classic, but not one that I would necessarily call "timeless". Game design has come a long, long, way since 1998
- I wouldn't be opposed to a full remake of this game (but keeping the original voicework) if such a thing were possible. Given Disney's track record of "vaulting" content that didn't sell well at release, I think this is the last official version of Grim Fandango we'll see, unfortunately
- After seeing that the remastered visuals weren't anything that would benefit from a larger screen, I wound up just playing this on the couch on the Steam Deck. It performed well, and the analog sticks made the tank controls a little more bearable

Final Verdict
- 8.5/10. Before playing the remaster, I was totally prepared to give this game something in the 9.5-10 range, but actually revisiting it has given me some pause. The story, art, and voice work are all still incredible and hold up, but I have less tolerance for the unintuitive puzzles than I used to. Some of them are actually pretty bad in retrospect. That said, this is absolutely a must-play for any point-and-click fan

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I’ve played a lot of video games in my time, and while it has led to some unforgettable adventures- there are times where the game I play lack originality and become a bit homogenous. Grim Fandango is not one of those games.

The first 10 minutes of this game have enough creativity and personality to be painted across an entire game and be impressive. The fact that it is only just the tip of the iceberg highlights how special this game is. In the span of this 10-ish hour adventure I was continually impressed by virtually everything it had to offer. Every corner of this world is dripping with atmosphere so palpable it’s hard not to be immersed. I fell in love with every character, and found them all to be as funny as they were genuinely compelling. The amount of care, wit, and outstanding writing poured into the narrative never got dull and I was sad to see the credits roll just because I was so absorbed into it. On top of everything, the smooth jazzy score and Final Fantasy VII-esque pre-rendered backgrounds combined with the stellar art direction presented this game with a matching level of enchanting enjoyability.

My only real criticism I have here is that the puzzles are hard, and while that is not inherently a bad thing- they aren’t hard in an always compelling or fair-feeling way. Many times the solution felt so obtuse I never slapped my forehead and said “oh man, I sure am dumb” when I resorted to a guide. Some solutions that I did find out were pushed aside by some occasionally unresponsive controls. It lends itself to a gameplay experience that is not always as consistently enjoyable as the rest of the elements of this wonderful game. I don’t often use the pretense of “play the game with a guide”, but in this case I don’t think it is of any shame- and if it lets you experience this story in a more accommodating way it certainly should be on the table.

Overall, I get why Grim Fandango is so revered now. It got its hooks in me fast and didn’t let go until the end. From its characters, iconography, and even things like little bits of Spanglish added to my vocabulary- it has left a massive impression on me already. I loved Grim Fandango, and I think my highest praise is that I am already considering playing through it again. Great, great time here. I will be keeping this near my heart, or where it used to be.