Grim Fandango
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| Developed and published by LucasArts, and released for Microsoft Windows on October 30, 1998, Grim Fandango is a noir-influenced adventure game, from the end of the adventure game age, fittingly set in the Land of the Dead. |
In January of 2000, five months before I graduated high school, my family bought a new PC. The Earth had survived Y2K, but our home computer was six years old, and good for little more than emulating SNES games and checking e-mail. I somehow convinced my dad to not only buy a top-of-the-line HP to replace it, but add on the "computer game value pack" extra. I wanted this "value pack" for one major reason: Grim Fandango. As a huge fan of LucasArts adventure games in the 90's, I was hugely dismayed that Grim Fandango, apparently the crowning achievement of the genre, wasn't something our computer could run. But this new computer...this new computer could do anything! Anything! It ran Heretic II, which also came in the value pack, like it was Pong. And it ran Grim Fandango just fine. I was so happy...until a week later, when my sister opened an attachment from a text-free e-mail, titled "HEY YOU." The virus inside this attachment decimated and immediately rendered our new Super PC useless.
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| Grim indeed |
Thankfully, I wasn't yet too far into Grim Fandango, but I didn't enjoy the fact that it took a full month to fix our computer. During that month I got into a major car accident, had a religious experience, and underwent a major life renaissance. Then we got our computer back, and I enjoyed Grim Fandango to the fullest. However, as with most PC games I played in the 90's and 00's, due to our newer computers aging out of them, I never revisted them again...until I discovered websites like GOG and Steam in the late 10's. Here was an incredible opportunity to revisit the games I played in my formative years whenever I wanted...and to start 2017, I got a new laptop that could easily run them. I ended up using some software to play the original version of Grim Fandango, and made it halfway through the game, finding I was enjoying it just as much as I did nearly two decades before...then my new laptop's hard drive inexplicably crashed, and I lost everything. Grim Fandango got interrupted...again.
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| Yeah, Manny, why do you keep letting this happen to me?! |
This was too much to bear. I couldn't work up the nerve to attempt another play through...until a couple of months ago. Maybe it's the unfettered mental wanderings of this quarantine, but my mind kept going back to Grim Fandango. Maybe it's because it's now been 20 years since my initial play through. I just had to experience it again. I had to relive those good times. I had to believe, like the first time I finished the game, the second time would be the charm. Sometimes, it's a good thing that the past repeats itself.
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| Especially when the past is awesome |
I might as well drop all pretense that this is an "objective" game review. This is an "I love Grim Fandango and it means a lot to me" game review. Grim Fandango is on my "Top Ten Favorite Video Games" list, and this most recent play through did nothing to change that. I love this game. Let's start with the aesthetic.
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| Mood: Aesthetic |
Grim Fandango takes the aesthetic of the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday, and envisions it through a film noir lens. Let me tell you: I really like Day of the Dead imagery. Always have since I was a little kid. I love how the game takes that, and infuses it into a literal modern version of the Aztec underworld. You know what I love even more, though? Film noir. Holy cow, do I love film noir. When I first got this game, I was on a huge Portishead kick, listening to that music, envisioning the decay of the 20th Century as it came to its end, Fin de siècle and all that, and holy cow did the pitch perfect film noir storytelling and style lens of Grim Fandango strike my fancy.
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| This is truly the end |
But what does this cultural mash up mean? Surely this driving question kept some buyers away from Grim Fandango upon its release. The idea and its implementation is so original...and sometimes, original doesn't exactly sell.
In Grim Fandango, you play as Manny Cavalera (get it?), a travel agent for the Department of Death, in the city of El Marrow, in the Land of the Dead, which is the Eighth Underworld. El Marrow is an art deco-inspired city, populated by dead, skeleton-looking folks like Manny, and helper demons. When someone on the Earthly plane dies, Manny can offer them travel packages, the quality of which is directly equal to that person's goodness on Earth. A very good person should qualify for a ticket on the Number Nine train, which takes its passengers on a comfortable, four-minute trip through The Land of the Dead, to the Ninth Underworld. Those who lived...less savory lives on Earth may find themselves having to walk or find their own means of transportation to the Ninth Underworld, generally a four-year long trip across terrain that includes an ocean in the middle of it...that is, unless they decide to just make the Eighth Underworld their home. Think of the Ninth Underworld as heaven, and the Eighth Underworld as purgatory.
In Grim Fandango, you play as Manny Cavalera (get it?), a travel agent for the Department of Death, in the city of El Marrow, in the Land of the Dead, which is the Eighth Underworld. El Marrow is an art deco-inspired city, populated by dead, skeleton-looking folks like Manny, and helper demons. When someone on the Earthly plane dies, Manny can offer them travel packages, the quality of which is directly equal to that person's goodness on Earth. A very good person should qualify for a ticket on the Number Nine train, which takes its passengers on a comfortable, four-minute trip through The Land of the Dead, to the Ninth Underworld. Those who lived...less savory lives on Earth may find themselves having to walk or find their own means of transportation to the Ninth Underworld, generally a four-year long trip across terrain that includes an ocean in the middle of it...that is, unless they decide to just make the Eighth Underworld their home. Think of the Ninth Underworld as heaven, and the Eighth Underworld as purgatory.
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| This is my kind of purgatory |
For some reason, though, it seems like Manny only gets the low-qualifying deceased, while his coworker, Domino, gets all of the most most virtuous, high-qualifying. One day, Manny steals one of Domino's prospective clients, an incredibly virtuous woman named, Meche, only to find that Meche too only qualifies for a walking trip. Something sinister is afoot, and Manny is going to get to the bottom of it.
When I mentioned the above aesthetics, think of Day of the Dead-inspired skeletons (characters are simple, but well and charmingly designed), and all the ornamentation of that holiday--then add strips of light from partially drawn shades shining onto them in unlit rooms, while they wear 1930's fashion and smoke copious amounts of cigarettes, Chrysler-building inspired skyscrapers rising up on the other side of the window.
When I mentioned the above aesthetics, think of Day of the Dead-inspired skeletons (characters are simple, but well and charmingly designed), and all the ornamentation of that holiday--then add strips of light from partially drawn shades shining onto them in unlit rooms, while they wear 1930's fashion and smoke copious amounts of cigarettes, Chrysler-building inspired skyscrapers rising up on the other side of the window.
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| Hey, he's DEAD, he can smoke all he wants! |
Take that aesthetic, and then imagine it put to the highest quality sound, as well. A Peter McConnell-composed jazz soundtrack, infused with mariachi and other Latin music genres, along with some cinematic orchestration perfectly sets the tone. Speaking of perfect, Grim Fandango not only features what may be the best voice-acting in the history of video games, but the best dialogue and one of the most original, best told stories. The developers hired Latin American actors, even going so far as to let them alter their dialogue for authenticity. The result is a blend of snappy Spanglish, with the wit and economy of the best classic hard-boiled detective stories, and the absolute height of 90's snark and irreverence. These characters can talk! Laugh-out-loud moments abound.
But what is all this at the service of? Or rather, what gameplay is at the service of this aesthetic and storytelling excellence?
But what is all this at the service of? Or rather, what gameplay is at the service of this aesthetic and storytelling excellence?
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| Where is this gorgeous train headed...or rather, can these tracks carry this gorgeous train? |
LucasArts adventure games were known for the quality of their gameplay, with point-and-click puzzle-solving married perfectly to information-gleaning, highly interactive dialogue sequences. Grim Fandango magnificently streamlines the traditional 90's adventure game systems. For instance, there's no inventory or action box at the bottom of the screen. You can access your inventory, composed of items you've picked up specific to each portion of the game with the touch of a button. You have to use the items in the proper places, at the proper moments, to solve the often non-linear puzzles of each specific area of the game to progress. Instead of pointing and clicking with a mouse, you move Manny around each 3D, pre-rendered screen with the keyboard arrow keys. If there's an object (all drawn and animated in 3D) nearby that Manny can interact with, he turns his head toward it, and you can press "Enter" to investigate, or to interact with it with any item you've pulled out from your inventory.
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| Now I just need to find some kind of "grind to powder" device and "use" it on you |
This presents, arguably, Grim Fandango's only flaws, as at a few moments, it's easy to overlook or miss an interactive object, and at more than a few moments, the game's puzzles can feel a bit esoteric. It's not that the game's most difficult problems are impossible to solve, it's that the way of thinking necessary to solve them is so far out of the box as to seem impossible. Playing through Grim Fandango now, nearing 40, I was amazed that my 18-year-old self was able to make it through this game, albeit over the course of several months, without a few glances at the strategy guide I purchased for this most recent play through. Then again, I played through this game over the course of SEVERAL MONTHS back then, wandering around the same environments over and over again, trying every possible action, investigating each environment with a fine-tooth comb, and having every possible conversation. You can cheat a little, or be a genius, and finish Grim Fandango in 15-20 hours, or wrack your brain, exhaust every possibility, and play it for 30-40. Wait, did I mention the conversations...
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| For the talking |
Conversations with other characters in Grim Fandango are tremendous, with vast dialogue branches. I don't know how long the script for this game is, but it's got to be sizable. Generally in Grim Fandango, you have to not only solve puzzles to progress, but have the right conversations with the right characters. While the more esoteric puzzles can be a pain, character interactions never are...they're marvelous. Every element of this game is so cohesive and fully realized.
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| I never want to say goodbye |
I must make a point here: I've read several articles written by modern gamers (notice I didn't say "younger"... some of these folks are my age or older). that nitpick several elements of Grim Fandango. Frankly, these nitpicks make these writers seem quite lazy. For instance, Grim Fandango allows you to save your game at any moment, at any time. While you can't die or reach a point of failure, it's nice to be able to restart the game from the exact moment you left off. These gamers, though, bemoan the lack of autosaving, and...who cares? I also hear complaints about the game's controls--give me a break! Five minutes into the game, they're as intuitive as anything. Just because something is different from what you're accustomed to doesn't mean that it's bad. I'm convinced that the only objectively detrimental issues to Grim Fandango's quality are the few puzzles that don't have very intuitive solutions, and the very small handful of important objects that are difficult to detect. These are the kinds of issues that should cause a reviewer to knock a few decimal points off of a numbered-scale review...not remove Grim Fandango from any "best of all time" lists.
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| Wait, I've got one more paragraph! |
If it's not clear from the above avalanche of words, the past 20 years have done nothing to cool my red hot Grim Fandango love. I know the 20th Century ended 20 years ago, and we're all the way to adult Generation Z'ers by now, but I've still got that 20th Century fin de siècle fetish, and I probably always will. I absolutely love late 20th Century art that amalgamates some of the best of what the century had to offer. On top of that, the way Grim Fandango plays with darkness, my old friend, but also moves toward optimism, my distant, but hopefully ever-closer goal, gives me such great satisfaction (and mirrored my own personal renaissance 20 years ago).
That's a lot of words. I hope that I've shown why this objectively great game is great...but I also hope that I've shown why, for me, it transcends even that greatness...Grim Fandango is a part of the fabric of my life.
That's a lot of words. I hope that I've shown why this objectively great game is great...but I also hope that I've shown why, for me, it transcends even that greatness...Grim Fandango is a part of the fabric of my life.
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