Oh, I wish I could say that I enjoyed my time with Grim Fandango. After all, it has a lot going for it, starting with the intriguing premise of a group of skeletons in the afterlife selling Heavenly travel packages to recently deceased. But unfortunately, no matter the graphical enhancements done by the remaster, it cannot escape the fact that it is a point-and-click adventure of the 90s, and from my research, what this means is that it is inherently full of puzzle contrivances.
Nowadays everyone complains about the $60-70 price tag for a video game, but back in the day, not only were they much more expensive, but they were shorter as well. Outside of RPGs, you never got your bang for your buck and so, to try and work around this, artificial longevity measures were implemented to give games the appearance that they had a lot more content than they actually contained- secret endings, new game pluses, and collectibles (cough cough Rare) were the most common of these tactics. But for PNCs, contrived puzzles were an additional one. What I mean is solutions to in-game riddles or obstacles often entailed something so ridiculous or out there that there was no guarantee that you would ever come to it logically. You would either find it accidentally, go through every motion in the book, or happen to purchase a guide.
I’m not saying that every answer in Grim Fandango is nonsensical, but for every genuinely good puzzle-answer combo, I honestly felt there were at least two that made no sense. It’s particularly prevalent in the first and second chapters, though the other two contain these as well (to a lesser degree to be fair). For example, knowing where to put the sign in the petrified forest; accessing the secret floor of the casino via clipping a forklift in the elevator. It’s honestly frustrating, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consult a walkthrough frequently.
Now, I know there'll be ardent defenders of Grim Fandango who will claim that this simply isn’t for me and that I would be better off playing something intellectually easier. I’ll concede that I didn’t grow-up with PNCs, so it is true that it isn’t a genre that holds a particular sway over me. And I also openly admit that I am not that smart when it comes to puzzles. But my counterargument is that I shouldn’t have to think outside the box for a video game engima: the principal formula is clue, cause, and effect, and all too often the game fails to deliver on the first, making the latter two appear out-of-the-blue. Grim Fandango also often suffers from the Water Temple Key problem of interactable objects not being distinguishable enough from the background, meaning you can miss obtaining a vital item simply because you happened to move your cursor over the wrong part of the room.
That being said, I could’ve overlooked most of this had the story been solid, but that isn’t the case. I noted GF’s fascinating premise, and you would think from reading it that this would make for a solid satirical adventure in the vein of Futurama (that is, using an outlandish setting to comment on real-world issues in a humorous vein). The idea of grim reapers being working-class travel agents vending tickets to Heaven fits that bill, lending itself to commentary on society’s overvaluing of money, existentialism, death & taxes, morality, etc….
And yet, not only is none of that there (or if it is, it’s barely touched upon), but Grim Fandango’s writers make the oddball decision to NOT render the story a comedy. It has humorous moments for sure, but is otherwise portrayed as a straightforward drama. It’s not that it’s self-serious, it’s that it walks this strange line in the vein of a comedy-drama (though much more the latter than the former), and I couldn’t help but see that as a real missed opportunity. Why even have this comical foundation if you weren’t going to do anything witty with it? In his review of Shark Tale, TheMysteriousMrEnter’s pointed out how the movie could have been set in the real world and you wouldn’t have had a huge difference in the quality of the story due to its poor use of its aquatic setting, and that's kind of the same feeling I get with Grim Fandango. Instead of skeletons in the Afterlife selling travel packages to Heaven, why not priests working at some anonymous religious institution in an unnamed country doing the same, trying to get people to sign up for a travel suite in the event of an untimely demise? Seriously, the characters here rarely do anything extraordinary, labor just like regular humans, and, get this, can die! Yes, Grim Fandango, despite taking place in Limbo or a realm of the Underworld, features death (called “sprouting”), something that makes no sense and isn’t explained in-game.
But okay, putting aside my expectations, at face value is the narrative good? The answer is no, not really. You play as Manny Calavera, one of these insurers who steals a client named Mercedes from his salesman rival, only to fail to qualify her for a proper package, causing her to leave. Threatened with jailtime for his actions and feeling guilty over letting Mercedes/Meche get away, Manny embarks on a journey with his demon compatriot Glottis to rescue her and find out what is going on at the company he toils at.
It sounds like a decent yarn for a PNC adventure, but the writers consistently fail to make me invested in the journey. If Manny was trying to find Meche because he simply wanted a get-out-of-jail free card, then I would be all for it as that is not only relatable but plays to the fact that they didn’t develop anything between the two characters. Unfortunately, his main drive is regret- other NPCs and Manny himself consistently guilt trip him over Meche getting lost, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. It was like they were trying to pull an Edward Kenway, but failed to put any of the groundwork in place. Manny didn’t tell Meche to depart the building, he simply had her stay in his office whilst he went away to figure things out- she, OF HER OWN ACCORD, ran away, and I’m supposed to buy that it’s Manuel’s fault? There’s also this subplot involving a covert underground group called the LSA, but it again doesn’t stand out as entertaining enough on its own merits.
The four chapters are also divided by year-long time skips, a pet peeve of mine from my anime days. I hate time skips because they take away vital character development, and while there technically is no character development to speak of in Grim Fandango, it’s ridiculous to think that Manny maintained this guilt over the years whilst he did all these other activities. It also takes away from the urgency that the narrative rests on about finding her before she ends up dying (sorry, sprouting).
I wish I could say that the individual B plots in each chapter are fun or the NPCs kooky, but no, not really. You get some of the latter, but because everything is treated seriously, you’re robbed of a lot of humorous potential, and the low drama isn’t engaging or thematically-deep enough that you’ll be sucked into the side stories. Seeing a bunch of worker bees start chanting Marx seems comedic enough, but it’s played straight. I suppose that’s what I mean by Grim Fandango hitting this weird in-between: it gives farcical concepts, only to interpret them solemnly.
If I can end on a positive note, it’s that the friendship between Manny and Glottis is well-developed, making their interactions all the more enjoyable/emotional to watch.
Graphically, Grim Fandango has aged wonderfully. I did play the remaster, but the remaster gives the option to switch back to the old version with the click of a button (backspace) ala the Master Chief Collection, and what’s amazing is how the backgrounds and backdrops didn’t get a face lift. Only the character models did, and Double Fine Productions deserves absolute credit for modernizing these models while simultaneously maintaining their original artistic style and lip-synching. However, the backgrounds, despite being the same ones from 1998, look fantastic: they fit each setting and don’t pop out like some of the 2D cities from 3D Legend of Zelda games.
The art style has been talked about a lot by other reviewers, combining noir, neo-noir, Aztec religions, and Dia de las Muertas, so I won’t go into too much detail here (also because I’m just not good at talking about aesthetics) outside of saying that it’s beautiful. A lot of time went into conceptualizing it and it shows in the final product, with there being a genuine Latino vibe to the world no matter the location (insurance company to underwater to Heaven). That being said, some shortcuts were taken, like the lack of shadow-mapping and soft baked lighting, and some of the full-fledged computer animated cutscenes contain too much grain at times, but these are minor. Even the overly smooth 3D animations, whilst lacking in-depth touches like climbing or gripping stairs/ladders, have a charm that I liked a lot.
SFX is surprisingly lacking, with there being no footsteps and a lot of items having only a single noise programmed to it no matter your action (i.e., swiping at an object with Manny’s scythe produces the same sound). However, this is made up for by the two other categories: voice acting and music.
Grim Fandango has one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) voice acting I have ever seen in a video game, and by voice acting I mean for EVERY CHARACTER. This is a title that did not skimp on direction or performers, which is something you frequently see with conventional titles (ex. awful sounding NPCs in Bethesda and Ubisoft games). The main characters are perfect, with Tony Plana as Manny and Alan Blumenfeld as Glottis deserving particular praise for their chemistry and work, successfully conveying emotions without ever losing their core essence or sounding phoned-in. Even things as simple as item descriptions in your inventory are delivered excellently by Plana. And Maria Canals-Barrera knows how to throw on the seductive tone!
The OST by Peter McConnell is something I had high expectations for after Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory told me how it was one of his three most influential scores, and I have to say that it lived up to that hype. One of the inherent musical issues faced by PNCs is that, because you’re frequently moving between areas, you don’t have time to listen to a particular track for an extended period of time. To counter this, music editors either play a single track for one area without stopping or have a distinct track that restarts every time you reenter. With the first, you risk getting tired of the music, with the latter you risk getting annoyed by all the changes!
Grim Fandango opted for the latter, meaning there was a good chance I’d get sick of the constant alterations, but what McConnell did is dig into a soft distinct melody that starts off on a pleasant yet definite note, and all tracks stay within the folk and jazz genres. This means it never gets upsetting to relisten to it from the start, and the music is all relatively similar sounding that you’re not suffering from jarring transitions. The fact that he chose to reorchestrate the score with a symphony orchestra for the remaster is outstanding, and gives even more credit to him as a musician.
Gameplay is standard for this type of game. You can play with a controller or keyboard, but it obviously works a lot better if you go with a mouse. Interactions are solid and you’ll never get into a hassle doing what you want to do with the cursor. One issue I have is that sometimes the animations for climbing can last a noticeable amount of time and the inventory doesn’t go back to the last item you had- also, sometimes an item won’t be directly useable on an object you need to use it with, meaning you need to instead use the generic use prompt that comes up on the screen when you pull out an object. But these are all small in the grand scheme of things.
Overall, though, I can’t recommend Grim Fandango. The story isn’t particularly great, fails to live up to the jocular potential of its premise, and features some dumbstruck-inducing puzzles that I guarantee you, you won’t be able to solve without consulting a guide. However, with its lush visuals and top notch score/voice acting, it’s more of a cinematic experience that is worth witnessing via one of those video game movies you see compiled on YouTube or other video sharing platforms. In that regard, I recommend you “play” Grim Fandango (as in, hit the play button on a YouTube video xD).
Nowadays everyone complains about the $60-70 price tag for a video game, but back in the day, not only were they much more expensive, but they were shorter as well. Outside of RPGs, you never got your bang for your buck and so, to try and work around this, artificial longevity measures were implemented to give games the appearance that they had a lot more content than they actually contained- secret endings, new game pluses, and collectibles (cough cough Rare) were the most common of these tactics. But for PNCs, contrived puzzles were an additional one. What I mean is solutions to in-game riddles or obstacles often entailed something so ridiculous or out there that there was no guarantee that you would ever come to it logically. You would either find it accidentally, go through every motion in the book, or happen to purchase a guide.
I’m not saying that every answer in Grim Fandango is nonsensical, but for every genuinely good puzzle-answer combo, I honestly felt there were at least two that made no sense. It’s particularly prevalent in the first and second chapters, though the other two contain these as well (to a lesser degree to be fair). For example, knowing where to put the sign in the petrified forest; accessing the secret floor of the casino via clipping a forklift in the elevator. It’s honestly frustrating, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consult a walkthrough frequently.
Now, I know there'll be ardent defenders of Grim Fandango who will claim that this simply isn’t for me and that I would be better off playing something intellectually easier. I’ll concede that I didn’t grow-up with PNCs, so it is true that it isn’t a genre that holds a particular sway over me. And I also openly admit that I am not that smart when it comes to puzzles. But my counterargument is that I shouldn’t have to think outside the box for a video game engima: the principal formula is clue, cause, and effect, and all too often the game fails to deliver on the first, making the latter two appear out-of-the-blue. Grim Fandango also often suffers from the Water Temple Key problem of interactable objects not being distinguishable enough from the background, meaning you can miss obtaining a vital item simply because you happened to move your cursor over the wrong part of the room.
That being said, I could’ve overlooked most of this had the story been solid, but that isn’t the case. I noted GF’s fascinating premise, and you would think from reading it that this would make for a solid satirical adventure in the vein of Futurama (that is, using an outlandish setting to comment on real-world issues in a humorous vein). The idea of grim reapers being working-class travel agents vending tickets to Heaven fits that bill, lending itself to commentary on society’s overvaluing of money, existentialism, death & taxes, morality, etc….
And yet, not only is none of that there (or if it is, it’s barely touched upon), but Grim Fandango’s writers make the oddball decision to NOT render the story a comedy. It has humorous moments for sure, but is otherwise portrayed as a straightforward drama. It’s not that it’s self-serious, it’s that it walks this strange line in the vein of a comedy-drama (though much more the latter than the former), and I couldn’t help but see that as a real missed opportunity. Why even have this comical foundation if you weren’t going to do anything witty with it? In his review of Shark Tale, TheMysteriousMrEnter’s pointed out how the movie could have been set in the real world and you wouldn’t have had a huge difference in the quality of the story due to its poor use of its aquatic setting, and that's kind of the same feeling I get with Grim Fandango. Instead of skeletons in the Afterlife selling travel packages to Heaven, why not priests working at some anonymous religious institution in an unnamed country doing the same, trying to get people to sign up for a travel suite in the event of an untimely demise? Seriously, the characters here rarely do anything extraordinary, labor just like regular humans, and, get this, can die! Yes, Grim Fandango, despite taking place in Limbo or a realm of the Underworld, features death (called “sprouting”), something that makes no sense and isn’t explained in-game.
But okay, putting aside my expectations, at face value is the narrative good? The answer is no, not really. You play as Manny Calavera, one of these insurers who steals a client named Mercedes from his salesman rival, only to fail to qualify her for a proper package, causing her to leave. Threatened with jailtime for his actions and feeling guilty over letting Mercedes/Meche get away, Manny embarks on a journey with his demon compatriot Glottis to rescue her and find out what is going on at the company he toils at.
It sounds like a decent yarn for a PNC adventure, but the writers consistently fail to make me invested in the journey. If Manny was trying to find Meche because he simply wanted a get-out-of-jail free card, then I would be all for it as that is not only relatable but plays to the fact that they didn’t develop anything between the two characters. Unfortunately, his main drive is regret- other NPCs and Manny himself consistently guilt trip him over Meche getting lost, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. It was like they were trying to pull an Edward Kenway, but failed to put any of the groundwork in place. Manny didn’t tell Meche to depart the building, he simply had her stay in his office whilst he went away to figure things out- she, OF HER OWN ACCORD, ran away, and I’m supposed to buy that it’s Manuel’s fault? There’s also this subplot involving a covert underground group called the LSA, but it again doesn’t stand out as entertaining enough on its own merits.
The four chapters are also divided by year-long time skips, a pet peeve of mine from my anime days. I hate time skips because they take away vital character development, and while there technically is no character development to speak of in Grim Fandango, it’s ridiculous to think that Manny maintained this guilt over the years whilst he did all these other activities. It also takes away from the urgency that the narrative rests on about finding her before she ends up dying (sorry, sprouting).
I wish I could say that the individual B plots in each chapter are fun or the NPCs kooky, but no, not really. You get some of the latter, but because everything is treated seriously, you’re robbed of a lot of humorous potential, and the low drama isn’t engaging or thematically-deep enough that you’ll be sucked into the side stories. Seeing a bunch of worker bees start chanting Marx seems comedic enough, but it’s played straight. I suppose that’s what I mean by Grim Fandango hitting this weird in-between: it gives farcical concepts, only to interpret them solemnly.
If I can end on a positive note, it’s that the friendship between Manny and Glottis is well-developed, making their interactions all the more enjoyable/emotional to watch.
Graphically, Grim Fandango has aged wonderfully. I did play the remaster, but the remaster gives the option to switch back to the old version with the click of a button (backspace) ala the Master Chief Collection, and what’s amazing is how the backgrounds and backdrops didn’t get a face lift. Only the character models did, and Double Fine Productions deserves absolute credit for modernizing these models while simultaneously maintaining their original artistic style and lip-synching. However, the backgrounds, despite being the same ones from 1998, look fantastic: they fit each setting and don’t pop out like some of the 2D cities from 3D Legend of Zelda games.
The art style has been talked about a lot by other reviewers, combining noir, neo-noir, Aztec religions, and Dia de las Muertas, so I won’t go into too much detail here (also because I’m just not good at talking about aesthetics) outside of saying that it’s beautiful. A lot of time went into conceptualizing it and it shows in the final product, with there being a genuine Latino vibe to the world no matter the location (insurance company to underwater to Heaven). That being said, some shortcuts were taken, like the lack of shadow-mapping and soft baked lighting, and some of the full-fledged computer animated cutscenes contain too much grain at times, but these are minor. Even the overly smooth 3D animations, whilst lacking in-depth touches like climbing or gripping stairs/ladders, have a charm that I liked a lot.
SFX is surprisingly lacking, with there being no footsteps and a lot of items having only a single noise programmed to it no matter your action (i.e., swiping at an object with Manny’s scythe produces the same sound). However, this is made up for by the two other categories: voice acting and music.
Grim Fandango has one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) voice acting I have ever seen in a video game, and by voice acting I mean for EVERY CHARACTER. This is a title that did not skimp on direction or performers, which is something you frequently see with conventional titles (ex. awful sounding NPCs in Bethesda and Ubisoft games). The main characters are perfect, with Tony Plana as Manny and Alan Blumenfeld as Glottis deserving particular praise for their chemistry and work, successfully conveying emotions without ever losing their core essence or sounding phoned-in. Even things as simple as item descriptions in your inventory are delivered excellently by Plana. And Maria Canals-Barrera knows how to throw on the seductive tone!
The OST by Peter McConnell is something I had high expectations for after Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory told me how it was one of his three most influential scores, and I have to say that it lived up to that hype. One of the inherent musical issues faced by PNCs is that, because you’re frequently moving between areas, you don’t have time to listen to a particular track for an extended period of time. To counter this, music editors either play a single track for one area without stopping or have a distinct track that restarts every time you reenter. With the first, you risk getting tired of the music, with the latter you risk getting annoyed by all the changes!
Grim Fandango opted for the latter, meaning there was a good chance I’d get sick of the constant alterations, but what McConnell did is dig into a soft distinct melody that starts off on a pleasant yet definite note, and all tracks stay within the folk and jazz genres. This means it never gets upsetting to relisten to it from the start, and the music is all relatively similar sounding that you’re not suffering from jarring transitions. The fact that he chose to reorchestrate the score with a symphony orchestra for the remaster is outstanding, and gives even more credit to him as a musician.
Gameplay is standard for this type of game. You can play with a controller or keyboard, but it obviously works a lot better if you go with a mouse. Interactions are solid and you’ll never get into a hassle doing what you want to do with the cursor. One issue I have is that sometimes the animations for climbing can last a noticeable amount of time and the inventory doesn’t go back to the last item you had- also, sometimes an item won’t be directly useable on an object you need to use it with, meaning you need to instead use the generic use prompt that comes up on the screen when you pull out an object. But these are all small in the grand scheme of things.
Overall, though, I can’t recommend Grim Fandango. The story isn’t particularly great, fails to live up to the jocular potential of its premise, and features some dumbstruck-inducing puzzles that I guarantee you, you won’t be able to solve without consulting a guide. However, with its lush visuals and top notch score/voice acting, it’s more of a cinematic experience that is worth witnessing via one of those video game movies you see compiled on YouTube or other video sharing platforms. In that regard, I recommend you “play” Grim Fandango (as in, hit the play button on a YouTube video xD).