Some, like the infamous Forsaken Forest/ flaming beavers section, are just plain irritating, and will have you rushing to an FAQ even if you think you remember the solution from first time around. On the ‘worse’ side, some of the puzzles are ludicrously finicky, dependent on exact positioning or split-second timing, or almost impossible to work out. The situations and the puzzles are often brilliant, with one solution forming part of a wider puzzle, which might be part of something larger still. On the ‘better’ side, it’s a product of LucasArt’s golden period, where the studio was at its most inventive and inspired. The gameplay? Well, that’s where both parts of ‘for better and worse’ come in.
While Grim Fandango shows its age in its technical limitations, its artistry remains timeless and beautiful. The art, meanwhile, which combines film noir and art deco with the vibrant colours and stylised skeletal motifs of Mexican beliefs, hasn’t withered with time. It’s a story that crams in mystery, suspense, murderous conspiracies, dodgy beatnik poetry and even some romance, yet without losing LucasArts’ trademark humour the dialogue is laugh-out loud funny, even now. Its hero, Manny Calvera, is a failing salesman peddling second, third and fourth-grade travel packages to newly arrived souls in the land of the dead. It was equally bold in its artistic choices, taking inspiration from a idiosyncratic blend of film noir, the jazz age and the Mexican Day of the Dead. At the time, Grim Fandango seemed like the shape of graphic adventure games to come. The results weren’t entirely successful – there’s a reason why the genre has returned to point-and-click – but they were exciting. Grim Fandango saw Tim Schaffer and his team trying to push the genre in a new direction, with a lead character who moved in three dimensions through each scene, his gaze reacting to interactive elements and objects, and new movement, interaction and inventory systems that swapped point-and-click for more visual, intuitive controls. While other genres had moved to 3D graphics engines, the point-and-click graphic adventure remained stuck in 2D. Luckily, both art and gameplay hold up pretty well.Īt the time, Grim Fandango was seen as a bold, experimental game for LucasArts. For better or worse, this is the same Grim Fandango we played in 1998, only with the lines a little cleaner and those skeletal faces sharper than you might remember.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GRIM FANDANGO REMASTERED 1080P
While some HD remasters are wholescale remakes, Grim Fandango Remastered is more a sympathetic restoration, gently upscaling the game’s late nineties 3D visuals for a 1080p full HD presentation and adding an entertaining commentary track, but leaving the art and the gameplay virtually untouched.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GRIM FANDANGO REMASTERED PS4
Available on PC, PS4, PS Vita (PC and PS4 versions reviewed)
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