The 1990’s were the golden age of graphic adventure games, with companies like Sierra and especially Lucasarts releasing plenty of classic titles like King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and Day of the Tentacle.
Then Myst happened.
The landscape changed, with first-person, clicky puzzle games replacing the traditional inventory-based brain-teasers, and the genre had all but imploded by 2000. There’s been a decent resurgence in recent years thanks to companies like Telltale Games, but one of the last great adventure games of the era was Lucasarts’ Grim Fandango. It was revolutionary for its time (1998!), offering an experience that blended the more traditional puzzling of Lucasarts’ best with a visual style more akin to Resident Evil. It also marked the last game Tim Schafer would produce at Lucasarts before he would leave to found Double Fine Productions.
It’s Double Fine who is re-releasing Grim Fandango Remastered 17 years later (Lucasarts, sadly, was a casualty of the purchase of Lucasfilm by Disney), with updated visuals, a redone score, and plenty of extras to entice a whole new generation of gamers…but has its time passed?
Grim Fandango tells the story of Manny Calavera, a travel agent for the Department of Death. These agents, dressed appropriately like the grim reaper, collect the recently-dead from the Land of the Living and offer them travel packages to expedite their four-year journey to the Afterlife. The best souls get tickets on the Number Nine, a train that will bring them to their end in 4 minutes as opposed to four years; the worst get far less efficient modes of transport (one soul is issued an Excelsior line walking stick).
Poor Manny can’t seem to collect any good souls, until he intercepts one Mercedes Calomar, a saintly soul who’s all but guaranteed a ticket on the Number Nine. Sadly, she is inexplicably declined, sending Manny on a four-year journey that sees him joining a guerilla resistance force, opening a successful night club, visiting the literal edge of the world, and unraveling a criminal conspiracy that infests the Department of Death.
The narrative is certainly the strongest point, dousing Schafer’s signature humor with plenty of noirish swagger. Calavera himself is likeable and flawed, a bony Bogart who starts off viewing Mercedes as nothing more than the ticket out of his miserable unlife, but spends years trying to save her—and himself in the process. Along the way, a wild and varied supporting cast weaves in and out of the tale, a parade of palookas and a deluge of dames that cement the game firmly in its 1940’s-flavored theme. The jokes are as dry as a good martini, and they almost never fall flat. I’ve been quoting them since the game’s initial release in 1998 (“This doesn’t look anything like Robert Frost!”) and seeing them paraded out again is a nostalgic treat.
Except…nostalgia is pretty much the main thing this game has going for it. While it showcases the best parts of the 90’s adventure boom, it’s also a product of its time. The puzzles are incredibly vague at times, and require more than a little trial-and-error to find their solutions. There’s no dearth of walkthroughs on the internet to help you through the rough patches, but I’m sure that gamers weaned on the more accessible fare of “modern gaming” may become frustrated at the more archaic flavoring of Grim Fandango. The second year alone is a massive undertaking, spanning dozens of screens and several multi-layered puzzles that became overwhelming at times. The game requires a complete immersion in its logic, and more than a little experimentation to see it through to the end.
In spite of its more “traditional” trappings, the game itself has seen an audiovisual upgrade that should make all but the most jaded of technophiles smile. The prerendered backgrounds have all gotten a nice upscaling, and the low-poly models still hold their own, thanks to their resemblance to the Dia de los Muertos sugar skulls that they’re emulating. The model textures are razor-sharp, and a fancy new lighting engine casts plenty of moody shadows that enhance the atmosphere, a fact reinforced by the ability to switch between original and remastered modes with a click of the right stick on the Dualshock. Best of all, the previously digital soundtrack has been re-recorded by a full orchestra, giving the game a level of cinematic bombast that enhances the old-timey movie feel perfectly. Finally, Double fine added in hundreds of pieces of concept art and real-time director’s commentary from Schafer that gives new insight to the making of Grim Fandango.
Unfortunately, the remastering is not without its flaws. The lighting engine glitched out on me several times over the course of my playthrough on the PS4, and attempts to save later in the game were peppered with inexplicable “An Error Has Occurred” messages which didn’t seem to actually affect the saving of games outside of slowing the process to a crawl. While there’s nothing truly game-stopping, it becomes more than a little frustrating given the polish the rest of the game received.