The Impact Factor

Don't Fear the Reaper

Review

Grim Fandango Remastered, Double Fine (PS4)

“Scaring the living is technically against the rules, but we all do it.”

Abstract: Grim Fandango shoulders the weight of tremendous expectation. Since its original 1998 release, I have heard tremendous praise for the game. Many stated that it is the best adventure game of all time. Following my first playthrough of Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts in 2005, I too felt the excitement to jump into the world of Grim Fandango. In every regard, Grim Fandango lives up my expectations: for better and worse. On one hand, Grim Fandango exudes the same brilliant inventiveness in world, game, and character design that is characteristic of all work by Schafer. The writing is hilarious, the characters are unique and memorable, and the game is truly unlike any other game that exists. On the other hand, Grim Fandango met my negative expectations as well. I read many complaints about how cryptic and infuriating the puzzles in Grim Fandango can be. This held true during my experience with the game. Despite the opaque puzzle design and a particularly frustrating second act, however, Grim Fandango’s unique wit and charm makes it an unforgettable experience that I would recommend to anyone.

Grim Fandango is a game I thought I might never get to play. Originally released for PC back in 1998, Grim Fandango was met with wide spread critical acclaim and quickly developed a passionate cult following. The game was helmed by the already famous Tim Schafer, whose work on early adventure games helped to both invent, and popularize, the genre. From The Secret of Monkey Island to Full Throttle, Schafer’s work exuded creativity and resonated with audiences worldwide. Grim Fandango was no exception: bursting at the seams with inventive characters and ideas, the game was lauded as one of the best adventure games of all time. Many hold it in the same regard to this day. Unfortunately for me, by 1998 I had largely moved away from gaming on the PC. My earliest gaming years were spent on the computer. I played games ranging from Math Rabbit to Freddi Fish to Marathon to Descent. I purchased my first console in 1997, the Playstation, and from that point forward I largely neglected computer releases. By the time I had heard about Grim Fandango, and had experienced some of Schafer’s other work, it would have been both expensive and challenging to set up a computer to play the game. This bothered me quite a bit, especially because I had recently become a huge fan of Tim Schafer.

My first Schafer title was Psychonauts. The game was released in 2005 for the Playstation 2 and, after reading some good press about the game, I picked it up. What a great decision 16-year-old me made. Psychonauts is bizarre and wonderful, placing you in the shoes of the young Raz, Razputin travels to camp Whispering Rock to become a psychonaut: a person gifted with psychic abilities who trains to fight evil. This trippy platformer is witty, hilarious, and filled with a great cast of characters. I was hooked on Schafer’s work from that point forward, and have since played Brutal Legend, Costume Quest, and Broken Age. In the back of my mind, though, I always wanted to find a way to play Grim Fandango. My desire was brought to a fever pitch with the massive rebirth of the adventure game genre recently, chiefly helmed by Telltale Games and their excellent The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. So, when Tim Schafer got on stage at E3 2014 and announced Grim Fandango would be coming to PS4 in early 2015 I was ecstatic. As soon as the game was released, I purchased it, played it, and here we are. Now, to the meaty part of the review.

Grim Fandango is unlike any game I have ever played, and succeeds on so many levels. From everything that I had heard about the game, to my own expectations of Schafer’s eccentric charm, Grim Fandango had quite a substantial promise to fulfill. I am happy to report that everything that I expected to be good about the game was great. Schafer’s fortes are story, world, characters, and dialogue, and all shine through in Grim Fandango. Let’s start with the story. You play as Manny Calavera, a reaper and travel agent at the Department of Death. Manny’s job is to escort souls from the mortal world to the Land of the Dead, and then figure out, based upon how good they were when alive, how long their journey to the final resting place will take. What starts out as an average day for the below-average travel agent Manny, quickly spirals into four-year journey across the Land of the Dead facing off against syndicated crime to help a client who was robbed of her quick passage. As heavy as that sounds, Grim Fandango keeps everything light and humorous. The story stays interesting throughout the roughly 10-hour game, adding new dimensions and unexpected twists throughout the four act structure.

The world of Grim Fandango is zany fantasy hybrid of a 1920’s crime noir and the Land of the Dead inspired by Dia de los Muertos. The world is diverse and interesting, featuring grimy cities, fancy casinos, and even underwater fortresses. Around every corner are pleasant eccentricities. Whether it is the maintenance demon who resembles a gorilla-starfish mixture, or birds with skeletonized human heads, nothing about Grim Fandango’s world is dull. And even in the face of such craziness, everything in the world feels like part of a consistent idea. I didn’t bat an eye when I came across the submarine piloted by a giant squid or a crowd of people placing bets on giant cat races. There is a tremendous depth to the game world too, that goes far beyond the scope of the main story. This place, this land of the dead, is essentially its own character. Few games work so hard to create such a memorable, complex world. A fantastic soundtrack reinforces the already fantastic art direction and world design, and stands out as a highlight when looking back at the game.

Manny is just one of the many great characters
in Grim Fandango.

As great as the world is, the characters are even better. Manny Calavera is the heart of Grim Fandango. The sharp-tongued Manny is a blast to play. Every interaction Manny has is hilarious, and his sarcastic and quippy demeanor is one of the chief driving forces behind the game’s charm. As down on his luck do-gooder, Manny’s antics resonate immediately with the player and are fun to carry out. For an adventure game that places a high demand on having a protagonist you can relate to and enjoy playing as, you do not get much better than the goofy and charming Manny. Much like Schafer’s other games, the whole ensemble is littered with fantastic and memorable characters. Glottis, Manny’s speed-addicted, lounge-singing, alcoholic demon sidekick is as much fun to talk to as his description would suggest. Domino, Manny’s co-worker, is a self-obsessed corporate tool who constantly harasses you. He’s also hilarious. From Meche to Salvador to Celso to Lupe, nearly every single character is great. You will want to talk with them until all their dialogue options run out, every time. The only character that leaves something to be desired is the main antagonist, Hector LeMans, who winds up being bland and underdeveloped. But with such a large cast of unforgettable characters, his weakness hardly detracts from the final experience.

I want to spend a little extra time covering the excellent dialogue in Grim Fandango, since it is so crucial to the experience. Grim Fandango is funny. Despite the few moments of physical comedy that take place, the game relies on the dialogue to carry the full weight of its comedic aspirations. And it totally succeeds. A game being actually funny is not an insignificant achievement. So few games even attempt humor, let alone are successful at it. Many games that try to be funny stumble, or try so hard to “be funny” that ends up too over the top or pandering. A recent example is Sunset Overdrive, a game that, despite the pedigree of funny game writing at Insomniac (makers of the Ratchet & Clank series), comes off as desperate to get laughs. Borderlands 2 is another funny game, and one I quite like, but even it sometimes stumbles in its attempts to be funny (Tiny Tina was way too much for me). But Grim Fandango is genuinely and consistently funny. The jokes, puns, and gags are evenly spread throughout the game, and no one kind of humor is overwrought. Whether it is in conversations with other characters or environmental interactions, you can count of Manny and the ensemble to give you laughs. In my experience, this is one of the hallmarks of a Tim Schafer game. Psychonauts, Costume Quest, and Broken Age are all funny without giving the impression they are trying hard to do so, and Grim Fandango is probably the funniest of the bunch.

 

"Run you pigeons, it's Robert Frost!"

While Grim Fandango happily met all of my positive expectations, it unfortunately also confirmed the veracity of the criticisms levied against it. Grim Fandango retains many of the issues that plagued adventure games in the late 90s, which almost certainly led to, in part, the decline of genre. The faults all fall under the umbrella of accessibility, or really, lack thereof. Progression in Grim Fandango is non-obvious. Aside from conversations, the only other key element of gameplay is the puzzles. “Puzzles” is a generous term, though, since many of these require figuring out interactions that are only very subtly indicated by the game. Puzzles in Grim Fandango range from clear, to opaque, to utterly inscrutable. Unless you are using a walkthrough, you are going to get frustrated while playing Grim Fandango. The puzzles are just that tough. Grim Fandango exists at a point in time for adventure games when solving puzzles was less about gathering contextual clues or thinking outside the box, but moreso reading the mind of the game developer. Putting yourself in Schafer’s shoes. For instance, one puzzle solution requires taking the skeletal arm of a body you come across, putting it into a snow making machine, and grinding it in a sewer to reveal the path of a character you’re following. What? The second act in particular is filled with confusing, challenging puzzles. Further, there is a puzzle at the end of the first act that is not only difficult to figure out, but also required precise timing, resulting in frustrating trial and error. “Trial and error” is a good way to describe a lot of puzzles in Grim Fandango.

 

You can say that again, Manny. Some puzzles are infuriating.

Grim Fandango does little to make puzzle solutions obvious, and disregards any form of hand holding. To solve puzzles, you require using objects obtained from the environment. In modern adventure games, key objects will be highlighted upon approaching them. This lets you know you might need them for a solution later in the game. In Grim Fandango, you have to know that you can pick up the item or, as the case was for me, often mash the “pick up” button to make sure I don’t miss an item. Mashing results in repeated dialogue, which adds to the frustration already built up by the opaque puzzles. The game letting you know what you can, or can’t, use to solve puzzles would certainly help in solving them. A hint system would have been nice, or contextual dialogue that leads you to the next step of the solution, but neither really exists in game. As a final point of contention, situations arise in which you have the item and know the solution, but the game will not let you “solve” the puzzle. This happens because many of the interactions have to occur in a very particular way, or very particular place. Grim Fandango is a game that demands a smooth playthrough. With such great characters and story, it feels all the worse when you’re stuck trying to figure out how to get a book from some beatniks. As a point of disclosure, I did use a guide at points to get through the game, which made the experience so much better. If I got stuck for days on end trying to beat Freddi Fish when I was a kid, there is no way I was going to rip my hair out trying to figure out everything in Grim Fandango, especially not with so much on my plate.

As far as the “Remastered” part of this review is concerned, there is not that much to write about. The improved character textures and lighting looked great, and the remade songs sounded nice. I wish more had been done to improve the static backgrounds, or more had been done to make the game look a little crisper. Grim Fandango is not a game that requires the best graphics, though, and the game played great. That is what mattered the most to me.

Grim Fandango is a fantastic game. It completely lives up to its reputation, both the praise and the criticism. Adventure games of recent years have taken a turn for the deadly serious, so it was a breath of fresh air to play through such a whimsical, funny game. Grim Fandango creates a memorable world and characters that make the game an unforgettable experience; I just wish I could forget how annoyed I got when trying to solve some of the tougher puzzles in the game. Ultimately, the frustrating puzzle design does detract from the final package, but only slightly. Grim Fandango demands to be played so that it can share its wonderful creativity and wit with you. Just be sure have a guide handy.

Grim Fandango Remastered

4/5