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!
"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!
NovaNiles
14 days ago