Grim Fandango Remastered Review (Nicky)
They Don’t Make Games Like This Anymore
As far as puzzle games go, point and click has always been a favorite format of mine. The appeal of fixed scenes where everything from the placement of objects to the shots you view the scenes from being deliberate and purposeful is what has kept the medium alive for so many years. And among the dozens of point and click games I’ve played over the years, I don’t think I can confidently say a single one of them is better than Grim Fandango. But then what makes it so good?
Art
Grim Fandango is the epitome of point and click as a genre. If you ever want to blackpill someone on modern games, make them play Grim Fandango. If they are acute enough, they will quickly pick up on everything that makes the art direction leagues better than every modern AAA title. Things like how the carefully handcrafted environments are lively but not too noisy. How the camera angle is carefully chosen to put emphasis on all the important props in a scene without being too obvious about it. How the color palette is used perfectly to make sure nothing important blends in with the background and every area you can travel to is visible and obvious. Compare that to a modern AAA game where there is often too much noise in a given scene, yet so little to actually take in, and you’ll understand what makes Grim Fandango so great compared to the modern gaming landscape.
Writing
The original Grim Fandango came from an era of gaming where creativity was at a high point in the industry. Many of the best point and click games of all time were released in that decade, from the Monkey Island games, to the original Myst, and yet Grim Fandango holds its own against these household names of the puzzle genre. The story is interesting and creative, the writing is witty, and fun, and the characters are endearing and lovable. In essence, the game has a certain charm to it you don’t see in modern titles. Among the hundreds and hundreds of games I’ve played over the years, Grim Fandango is among the half a dozen or so games that I can recommend to people outside of the gaming bubble as an example of good writing in gaming. Even removing the gameplay, the story could stand by itself as a Disney classic tier movie from the late 90s. As for the gameplay though…
Gameplay
The gameplay is the biggest hurdle to overcome when getting into a game like this. There’s no way around it, the controls are clunky and the puzzles are hard, with solutions that often make little sense. Grim Fandango is just a product of its time in this regard. A relic from an era of gaming where a single game was supposed to last you many hours, and games were deliberately made harder as to extend their runtimes and increase that dollar to hour ratio. It’s not a game I recommend playing without at least some hints and the occasional walkthrough, that is unless you got a lot of time to kill. As for the controls, if you have the option, I would absolutely recommend playing it on a controller as opposed to a keyboard. The keyboard controls are clunky and unresponsive, and the controller is at least manageable.
Remastered?
There’s not much to talk about in this regard, it’s a remastering, not a remake. This just means very minor graphical upgrades that are toggleable with a single keypress. The graphical updates can cause some bugs occasionally, I personally had some struggles with the flaming beavers not jumping in the tar for a good 30 seconds instead of instantly like they should, but as far as gaming “upgrades” go, this remaster doesn’t change anything about the core gameplay and is rather inoffensive. The remastered soundtrack more than makes up for the occasional physics bug.
Conclusion
Grim Fandango is a masterclass in video game storytelling, writing, and art. It even features gameplay including controlling a character that will go where you want him to go most of the time. All jokes aside though, if you haven't played it by now or were too young to experience the original game, I can absolutely wholeheartedly recommend this game at its full retail price, something I almost never do.