Grim Fandango

If you're older than say... 14, you've been around long enough to have heard about Lucasarts adventure games. In fact, if you haven't, you probably should- if Lucasarts can do one thing right, its a humor-based adventure game. Monkey Island and the Indiana Jones DOS games are part of any avid gamer's DOS history, just along with famous games like Kings Quest and even the famed Text-based games.



In that similar vein, Lucasarts delved into their first 3D adventure game with Grim Fandango. Using the engine that Monkey Island 4 would eventually use, you play a rich, textured game that engrosses you in the game.

In Grim Fandango, you play the Department of Death agent Manny Calavera as you explore to save a woman, Mercedes Colomar, who has been cheated by the Department of Death of her first class ticket into her eternal rest.

The first thing that will leap out at you is that you play a skeleton. Yep, everyone in this game is plain-out dead, and in skeletal form. The intuitive thing about this is it doesnt try to play the traditional "Gothic scary skeleton" stereotype, while aiming for more of a Latin feel. Playing this game will eventually give you an accidental latin accent, a very bad thing for some of us who don't know a d***ed bit of spanish.



The game is plain fun, no doubt. It requires a lot more thought then you might think to figure out some of the complex puzzles, and sometimes might leave you confused and irritated. Honestly, sometimes, you just wish that they would have made things more obvious.

Which brings me to my only issue with this game. The game uses 2D backgrounds with 3D characters- a revolutionary idea pioneered by games like this and the Final Fantasy series for Playstation, but there's an obvious issue with this: Either the 3D objects are easily noticable, or not noticable at all. In fact, because of the "Dynamic camera angles" they use in some of the levels, you will become very confused. Plus, the controls are as such to limit your moving- either camera relative or character relative, both tend to have bugs working around some of the more complex maps. Overall, this doesnt help some of the more complex puzzles, as you'll find yourself missing key objects because either:
A. You didnt know you could go there,
B. You didnt see it because it was "Behind" a 2D object, or
C. It expected you to interact with part of the environment which you didnt notice.

However, while this is a definate unavoidable problem, it does not drag down the overall quality of the game. The game is LONG, totalling about 20-30 hours of normal play time. Granted if you've memorized everything it'll take you an amazing 2 seconds, but the first time around, you're gonna spend that 30 hours, 99% of it being confused to hell.

Overall, I liked this game. I like picking up a game and knowing that I'm going to spend time with mind-boggling puzzles and clever humor, and I don't regret a minute of my time doing so. While this game has virtually NO replayability (I have a tendency to memorize these things, so all those confusing puzzles go down the tube), the game itself is worth the price just for one play.

You can pick this game up for about $12 from eBay. This game runs on about any system with a 32+ meg video card and a decent amount of processing power, so even you guys with crap computer could run this. If you're tired of your typical shooters and strategies for the computer, pick up an oldie and a goodie- I guarantee you that you won't be left with a bad taste in your mouth.

4 star(s) out of 5

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