Sardonica: a moment of your time...

[Mentalist]

Looking at your favourite games you posted in that other thread I HAVE to suggest..

No wait..


DEMAND that you play Grim Fandango if you haven't allready.

Tim Schaffers finest game and the finest adventure game ever created. The creativity and work that went into this title is staggering.

Tim Schaffer is one of the all time greatest game developers of all time and Grim Fandango is his self professed finest hour. He wrote Day of the Tentacle was a developer on the Monkey Island games and the man behind Full Throttle. He was the sole force and director, writer and genius behind Grim Fandango with the rest of the highly talented Lucasarts team (back then) behind him.

Of all the games you’ve been involved in, what’s your favourite, and why?
Okay, that earlier “favourite” question was unfair, but this one is worse! I liked them all, for different reasons. With Grim Fandango and Psychonauts, I definitely feel like we reached the farthest and achieved the most, but those were also the two most grueling productions. Day of the Tentacle and the Monkey Island games were the most fun to work on, because they were so simple and less nerve-wracking than games are today. Smaller teams, more straightforward tech, fewer things to go wrong. Oh, those were the days.

It is probably the best time I have ever had with a game and one of the most memorable and enjoyable experiences. I will rave about Grim Fandango to my dying breath at which point I will turn up in the land of the dead and rave about it some more.

LucasArts flexes their storytelling muscle in this near-perfect adventure game.



November 3, 1998 - Most gamers today think of adventure games as endless repetitions of the same puzzles and storylines pieced together with some flat screen graphics (or worse still, some FMV) and some voice talent. Sadder still, for the most part, they're right. But one company has been doing it right since the beginning ? LucasArts. While other companies were aiming for watered down licenses that would spawn four or five adventure games in the same world, these guys have been creating games that are as deep and rich in and of themselves as any feature film. Four of these adventure games, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, and Full Throttle have become classics of the genre by standing as shining examples of game design, smooth puzzle incorporation, humor, and plot development respectively. Now, with Grim Fandango, the company has brought all of these features together in one title that stands miles above any yet released in the genre.


Yeah, yeah, I know, that's an awful lot of hyperbole in one intro, but Grim Fandango deserves it. Let's start with the game's storyline. You play Manny Calavera, a mid-level worker at the Department of Death (the DOD) who's trying to work off his sins in life so that he can get to his final reward. As a reaper, Manny frees incoming souls from their shrouds, finds out what kind of underworld travel packages their goodness in life has earned them, and then sends them on their way. Unfortunately, business hasn't been very good for Manny of late. As the game begins, Calavera is told that he must sell a premium travel package to a soul or lose his job. In his search, Manny uncovers a hideous plot, a beautiful woman, and a crew of loyal friends (not necessarily in that order). The world is a rich one, complete with its own laws, its own personality types, and landscapes.


The really ingenious thing about this game is that, unlike most adventure titles, at no point in Grim Fandango do you find yourself getting bored with what you're doing. The game takes place in four parts that switch up not only the environment that you're in, but also the goals that you must accomplish. Puzzles are complex and challenging, but so well integrated into the story that you never feel like you're doing busy work with cut scenes as your reward. Non-player characters in the game do a great job of prodding you along when you've been hanging out in one place for too long with helpful hints that never give a puzzle away, but that will at least give you an idea of what you should be trying to do. With a couple of irritating exceptions, most of the puzzles in the game are intuitive and make sense once you've figured them out. Sadly, there's no real way to go into more detail without ruining part of the game... You'll just have to trust me.

Presentation-wise Grim Fandango is unmatched. Not only have the designers created a world unlike any you've ever seen, they seem to make it all seem very realistic. All of the art in the game (characters included) feels like a Dia de los Muertos parade come to live. This art style is enhanced by subtle strokes and lines that enable you to tell all of the different characters apart at a glance. While this may not seem like that big of a deal, please consider that all of the virtual actors in the game are nothing more than skeletons in suits. Somehow the designers manage to make female skeletons beautiful, sleazy skeletons repulsive, and above all, the good skeletons loveable.

This incorporation of character into what would normally be inanimate objects is furthered by Grim Fandango's fantastic soundtrack and voice acting. A far cry from the 'hey, grab that secretary' feel of many adventure titles, Grim Fandango uses dozens of different voice actors to make sure that every character in the game has not only a unique voice, but also one that supports the specific character concept perfectly. Special kudos must be given to Alan Blumenfeld who provides the voice of Glottis, a comic relief character that will have you in stitches all the way through the game. Not satisfied with stopping there, LucasArts has put together a film class soundtrack that uses a blend of simple jazz and classical Mexican themes to add depth to the atmosphere of an already fantastic title. Not only is the soundtrack not annoying, but once again it is used to reinforce the emotions delivered in various sequences of the game.

So if all of this is true, why didn't Grim Fandango get a 10? Well, as sad as it is, the game is not perfect. There were a few movement bugs in the game (especially around the elevators, which would have a tendency to double open, or in more severe cases, require you to walk through them backwards), as well as a few more serious errors that would render your character immobile or actually kick you back out to Windows. Most of these problems only surfaced a few times though and, as long as you save your game fairly frequently, you probably won't have too hard a time with them. We also had a couple of gameplay issues with puzzles that required you to accomplish some goal within a fairly short amount of time and then stuck you behind a large group of obstacles with a poor camera view. Even so, the game does offer you the opportunity to change your camera view and, once the task had been accomplished, it didn't really seem like all that big of a deal.

Look, the bottom line is that Grim Fandango is hands down the best adventure game we've ever seen. If you're into adventure games, you've probably already bought this title, but if you're not I urge you to give this one a try. Even if you find yourself bored to tears by the idea of having to pick up objects and carry them from one place to another, you'll love Grim Fandango's incredible art, storyline and character development. This is a game destined for every gamer's all time favorite list.
-- Trent C. Ward

I dissagree about the lasting appeal since I have played it all the way through three times and will again. It's just that good.

There is also a LOT he didn't cover in the review about why this game is one of the all time best titles ever made.

Add to the fact that you can pick this up for next to nothing now and it all adds up into a game that MUST be played. It's genius, pure genius, there is no other way to put it.

Just check it out online, this is one seriously loved game, the reviews across the board declare this the Masterpiece to come out of the late 90's adventure games and it has never come close to being topped by anything.

Procure this title NOW, thank me later.

 

[Mentalist]

From Home of the Underdogs:

Something is rotten in the Land of the Dead. Manny Calavera, salesman for the Department of Death, hasn't been able to get a client in months that is eligible for a ticket on the Number Nine, the train that takes souls across The Land of the Dead, through Rubacava into the Afterlife. Manny can't seem to sell any better package than a walking stick to help souls in their journey. Fellow salesman Domino seems to be getting these premium clients at an ungodly rate. Meche Colemar, a sweet harmless woman, walks into Manny's office. She has a flawless record and is guaranteed a ticket on the Number Nine. Unfortunately, she only qualifies for the lowest package available. Manny has a suspicion that something is desperately wrong in the department and when he starts asking questions he is promptly fired from his job. Meche leaves the Land of the Dead to go on her trip and Manny and his pal (and comic relief of the game) Glottis go on a four year journey of heartache, hope, and self- discovery.


Grim Fandango is a trademark LucasArts adventure and simply one of the top five adventures ever created. Behind the game is a beautifully told story with witty and downright funny dialogues that you'll be quoting for days on end. Dare I say that some lines are as memorable as the classic lines from the classic films of the Film Noir genre.

Grim is essentially a computer game tribute to Film Noir. Pop culture references abound paying tribute to everything from Casablanca to Hitchcock to Bogart. You'll be snapping your fingers for days after you hear the phenomenal swing-jazz soundtrack that echoes the influences of Count Basie, Glen Miller, and Duke Ellington.

But any LucasArts game wouldn't be a LucasArts game without well designed characters and an easy to use interface. Manny, Meche, Glottis and their cohorts in the 3D gameworld are convincingly acted and realized. There is a depth and breadth to the characters seen in few games before or since. Tony Plana (the voice of Manny) and his fellow voice over actors present us with great voice acting without sounding forced or over-the-top.

For Grim, the designers chose to reprogram and tweak the SCUMM interface (used in all previous titles from the company). Instead of a traditional point and click interface, the designers opted for a keyboard-controlled system. While some complained, the controls are very intuitive and don't take away from some very challenging and devilishly designed puzzles.

A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into the creation of this masterpiece. Many of the buildings and game's set pieces are based on a combination of traditional Aztec art flavored with Art Deco design ideals capturing the mood of the game and of the period perfectly. The casino set is a page out of Monte Carlo history. The game's artists have stretched the 3D engine to it's limit to render some of the best Direct 3D graphics ever created, period. It's easy to see that each and every piece of this game was lovingly created.
Grim Fandango vies for an award for being the most flawless adventure ever produced. You'll laugh and cry as you follow Manny in his quest to find a lost love and, in many ways, find himself with the help of some of the greatest NPC's ever to be laid out on a story board. Due to unknown reasons, Grim never did well on the shelves but over the past few years, it has slowly crept into most critics' favorites list and has reaped some highly deserved (albeit late) attention. Grim Fandango is a game for all times and a proud entrant into our Hall of Belated Fame.

This guy gets it:

Trip to death

WARNING : this article being nothing but a point of (re)view, I recommend to every interested reader to first consult the very comprehensive review at Home of the Underdogs about Grim Fandango.


In an interview to one of France's main video games newspapers, Tim Schafer, the man behind Grim Fandango, had that typically sad-but-true statement: "Putting aside its qualities, Grim was a commercial setback. Our previous title, Full Throttle, sold much more copies. That's a point we forgot when designing Grim Fandango: people want to play what they dream of, and they dream more of being a biker who fights a lot than they dream of being dead and lost."
That might explain why Grim actually is an underdog. But let's forget objectivity for a second: THAT'S SUCH A SHAME! This game surely is a masterpiece, which drastically increases the quality level of adventure productions. And my opinion is that this is for a fair part due to its plot, which carries the player to the dark and odd "land of the dead".

First backup for the "dead characters" choice: the faces. That might sound as a detail, but in Grim Fandango, everyone is dead, so apart from demons such as Glottis (your character's best friend, some kind of funny huge orange hamster), everyone is skull-headed. Even you, as Manny Calavera, salesman for the DOD (Department of Death), just have two black holes for eyes and a row of teeth as a mouth - Calavera meaning cranium in Spanish, that's right. But thanks to a very sensitive design of face expressions, it is very easy to get what everyone's feeling - from love to hate, from despair to felony. Here's the paradox: Grim Fandango's dead skeletons give a much more convincing "human" appearance than lots of human-like heroes in other adventure games. You actually come to detesting Domino (Manny's rival in the DOD), you smile at Glottis' odd remarks and you tend to go berserk chasing Meche, your secret love.

But the real point that makes the "choice of death" a great one (I know, I know, such sentences may sound odd ) is the incredibly deep atmosphere it settles. It's very hard to try rendering it with words - maybe the best thing to do for you to understand would be to play the game, hee hee… But just try to imagine: as soon as the introduction cut scene begins, the tone of the whole game is given. You already know you just dived in some kind of strange interactive film noir. As you may know, "noir" means "black" in French. And that's the point: every detail in Grim Fandango is set to carry you to as strange mood, a mix between dark melancholy and the feeling of infinite tranquility you sometimes get just before dawn. The voices of the characters are just perfectly well interpreted - by a tribe of professional actors, which makes all the difference. They quickly soothe you into the strange universe of the game (a northern American city, but back from the 30's, and located in Central America). And the music - oh my god, the music! I'm in no way a fan of jazz music; in fact I could say I'm some kind of "jazz illiterate". But the soundtrack of the game is in such a perfect appropriateness with the whole universe that it's just impossible not to adore it. I particularly recommend the track that is played when Manny visits the HQ of a secret organization, the "Lost soul's alliance". I happened to stay for ages frozen just to enjoy the soft beat and the warm double bass line. And some tracks also have "the Latino touch", with Mariachi trumpets… So great!

With all those references to death and dark atmosphere, you could think Grim Fandango is some kind of "suicide prone" game, not to recommend to depressed persons. But you would be wrong (ok, ok, nobody's perfect ). One thing you should keep in mind is that LucasArts Studios produced this title. Which, when talking of video games, is a synonymous for "very, very funny". And that's right: in every dialog, every time you'll press the "action" button, each moment you'll rest on your seat just to watch a cut scene, you'll be awaiting the thing-to-make-you-laugh. And you'll probably never be disappointed. Because Manny Calavera is that kind of skeleton, with a very subtle and irresistible sense of humor - but who also gets mad sometimes. For the greatest pleasure of the player. I very often caught myself red handed, laughing out loud in front of my computer.

Didn't talk about the puzzles, the gameplay, the size of the game and all that kind of technical stuff. Believe it or not, that's a choice. The point is, I'd love you to understand that the main interest of Grim Fandango surely does not lies within its ability to fulfill the usual criteria of adventure games. It's just that only adventure-typed games could allow the programmers to create such a general ambience. I've been more absorbed in Grim's universe than in any other imaginary world, even the ones I encountered in the best movies I've seen and in the best novels I've red. And used with parsimoniousness, that's such a great feeling…

 

[Mentalist]

Good, good, thats a relief.

Ok, well this thread can serve as notice to those who have not yet seen the greatness that is Grim Fandango and will hopefully get at least one person to go out and get a copy.

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

*raises hand*

TEACH ME OBI WAN!

 

[Mentalist]

Go and get a copy! You will like it, for sure.

 

[Conchaga]

Is it mac compatible?