Grim Fandango

The Good
What an odd name Grim Fandango for a game is. I can understand the "Grim", because of the way all the characters look like little Grim Reapers, but with clothes on. "Fandango" is a Latin-American or Spanish dance, so if someone comes up to you and says "Do the Fandango", you'll know what they mean. And no, the plot is not about all the characters trying to out-perform each other in a dance contest.

After writing a negative review already, I decided to give this game another go. LucasArt's Grim Fandango tells the story of Manuel "Manny" Calavera, a travel agent who is employed by the Department of Death to sell travel packages to the dead on their way to the underworld. Unfortunately, one of his colleagues seem to get the best clients, and he suddenly has a bad reputation for not selling enough packages, and he is on the brink of getting fired from the job.

The game's description says that Grim is a masterpiece, and when I played the game all the way to the end, I can see why. The game is divided into four years, and each one of them contains marvellous 3D graphics. Every time I walked Manny between locations, I noticed how each of them is well designed, particularly the towns of El Marrow and Rubacava, LSA headquarters, the creepy petrified forest, and the coral mines where slaves do nothing but make lightbulbs for a living. The objects themselves look beautiful, and those that I found interesting to gawk at include the blimp that flies stationary over Rubacava (Too bad you cannot enter it.), the submarine and the octopus that guards it (The octopus looks scary as he keeps a close eye on you wherever you go.), and, most of all, the Number Nine train that carries people to the underworld.

The music and sound effects are nice. Most of the music inside the game is a combination of Spanish- and Mexican-style music. I prefer not to listen to this type of music, but I must say when a piece plays somewhere in the game, they reflect the situation that you are in, whether it is a love scene or running away from someone.

You control Manny's actions by using the keyboard to walk around and pick up and manipulate objects, and you will use the keyboard a lot. (Sorry, Grim uses LucasArt's new GrimE interface instead of the SCUMM interface used in earlier games, and due to restrictions on using the new interface, mouse support is just not possible). This means that you have to memorize at least ten commands, but they are easy to remember once you examined the help screen.

Whenever you accomplish something that is a requirement of the game, you will often watch a cut-scene. These cut-scenes look a lot detailed than the ones in earlier games, even those in The Dig is no match for those in Grim. And once you have viewed the cut-scene, you have the option of watching it again if it happens to be your favorite.

Like other adventure game should, you have the option of saving and loading games, and you can save as many games as you like and not worry about disk space, since each save game is just under 1MB. Me, not only do I like to save at any location that takes my breath away, but also at places where I could get myself in trouble. What is interesting about saving games is that at the top of the save/load game screens, a part of a painting is created to show you how much of Grim that you have completed. If you have many saved games, including the one where you are one step toward finishing the game, you can use the up and down arrow keys to quickly cycle between saved games to see how the painting is formed piece-by-piece.

There is a little bit of humor in the game. The things that Glottis, your demon partner, does is funny such as when he gets fired from his job and tells Manny that it is like that the DOD reached in and pulled his heart out, he actually does so and toss it in a spider's web, and this makes it rather difficult for Manny to release the heart from the web. Another highlight is going to the cat tracks in the second year and hearing the names of the cats that are competing, with names like "Hairball Surprise", "Smitten Kitten", "Meowy-Wowy", and "Kitty Kitty Bang-Bang".

The Bad
When I first submitted a review of this game, an approver told me "What??? I don't believe this. How could anyone find Grim Fandango boring?" Well, I meant that the game was boring the first time that I played it, but when I played it the second time, I found the game enjoyable. However, it is boring to have Manny take almost a minute to walk across the screen. I ended up holding down the [Shift] key to make him run from one place to the next. In fact, the walkthrough that I used to complete the game encouraged me to run rather than walk.

The Bottom Line
This game's install program has two types of installs: "Small" and "Large". My advice: Don't choose the "Large" option, unless you can wait for it to finish 20 minutes later. Grim Fandango comes on two CDs, but there was no need for the game to fit on a second CD, which is completely useless expect when you are installing the game.

Grim Fandango is a very good game with relaxing music and breathtaking 3D graphics, with a little bit of humor added to the mix, I believe that everyone (kids or adults) will find this game a joy to play.

Rating: ****

The Good
Tim Schafer. Day of the Tentacle was great, and Grim Fandango is his best work thus far. Fandango's humor is unmatched. I played through it twice to make sure I heard all of the possible dialogue choices.

Fandango's real strength comes from being able to be consistently funny, while still maintaining a sense of gravity, allowing serious situations to seem truly serious, and evil characters are as nasty as they need be. The dark, gritty presentation of the game is superb. Manny Calavera, the Grim Reaper for the Dept. of Death Is a smooth Bogart-esque character who gets the job done, and in one part of the game you own a nightclub, very similar to a certain gin-joint owned by certain Mr. Rick, complete with gambling tables, a French military man, and a wheezy little Peter Lorre. Watch Casablanca, then play Year 2 of this game and it will seem even funnier.

The Bad
There isn't a sequel...not that there really could be one...I guess my real gripe is that Schafer hasn't done anything since Grim Fandango.

The Bottom Line
A mysterious adventure set in the Land of the Dead that's as good as any Bogart movie, and even better than a few of them.

The Good
Grim Fandango is an excellent game, the graphics are so good, and the plot is simply fantastic. If you are an adventure lover, here you will find everything that you ever wanted:graphics? Even the backgrounds seem to be planned until the further details. Story? You will find an excellent plot here, while you help Manny to find the truth in the Land Of Dead. Puzzles? Yes, like in almost every good adventure, there are a lot of things that will make you guess and think to solve them.

The Bad
At first you will find yourself a little frustrated trying to move Manny, but once you get used to it, it will be very easy. And you cannot play it under Windows 2000, unless you download a patch for this SO from the people of Microsoft.

The Bottom Line
Once again, the people from LucasArts surprise us with a game that makes a big step in Adventure games.