Welcome to the lively Land of the Dead

User Rating: 8.5 | Grim Fandango PC
The Land of the Dead is a place of passage, all deceased souls converge into this place in order to take the long journey to the Temple of the Ninth Overworld, where their final fate will be decided. The means through which someone will reach the temple is based on how good of a life the person has led: by living in sin, they will have to toil away in the Land of the Dead for a while before their debt to the powers that be is properly paid; for doing just ok in life, the souls will be forced to walk – or use other lowly ways to reach the temple; and, for excelling in good deeds while living, lucky souls can gain access to fantastic transportation, ranging from a sports car to a high-speed train that does the four-year trip into a meager four minutes. As it is to be expected, and aggravated by the fact human nature is not lost upon death, that rewarding system leaves a lot of room for corruption and deceit, and Grim Fandango humorously shows that in death, just like in life, one should always keep one's eyes wide open because there will always be someone trying to take advantage of innocent souls.

It is in this world where we find Manuel "Manny" Calavera. While paying for his sins, he works at the Department of Death as a Grim Reaper, which, in Tim Schafer's brilliant vision of the other side, serves as a travel agent of sorts, harvesting recently deceased people as clients in order to sell them the appropriate travel packages for their journey. After having a good tenure as the department's most successful salesmen, we meet Manny struggling through a bunch of bad clients who only end up deserving of the poorest forms of transportation, making it harder for him to finally get his freedom and putting him in danger of losing his job. Upon realizing that Domino, his main competitor inside the office, has been having incredible luck by only getting the very best clients out there, Manny decides to stick his bony head in a dangerous investigation of what exactly is going on and ends up heading into a four-year journey himself, where he will uncover many of the dirty inner-workings of the Land of the Dead.

The most fantastic feature about LucasArts' take on the afterlife is how the dead are portrayed. Even though the scenarios on which the game takes place could be found in any real-world location, the characters that give life to the game are as extravagant as they could possibly be, creating a very interesting contrast between the pre-rendered background and the moving figures that star this engaging story. Grim Fandango looks like a Mexican parade of the Day of the Dead, featuring skeleton-like beings that are much more festive than they are scary, nicely setting the tables for a script that is constantly aiming, and succeeding, at causing big outbursts of laughter. Grim Fandango's art direction is quite unique, and it is a major statement to its quality that in the midst of great puzzles and a creative story, the one thing all players will remember fondly about the game is how fantastic it looks.

It can be said, then, that Grim Fandango is a game of pleasant contrasts. There is humor clashing with the theme of death, static scenarios paired up with vivid characters and there is also a 3-D setting joined with traditional puzzles of the adventure genre. Grim Fandango's gameplay is quite simple, and it is very integrated into the story. Controlling Manny, players will have to walk around, explore, interact with objects and identify problems that are stopping him from advancing further into the story: an activity that demands a lot of attention since most problems are not made that clear to gamers, even via dialogues. Solving the puzzles presented here is usually a matter of giving someone the proper response during a dialogue or using an object to trigger a certain action, but just like it is not easy to single out the problems, it is not easy to figure out the solutions either, because Grim Fandango requires a lot of thinking outside the box.

In one early moment in the game, for example, Manny comes across a demon who is casually complaining about having to fix the jammed communication system of the company. It might seem like a nice little random occurrence, but it is actually a tip that you should find a way to jam the communication system yourself so it is possible to proceed. The game's subtle manner of presenting its puzzles will admittedly drive some players insane, especially those who are diving into the genre for the first time; but anyone who is accustomed to how traditional adventure games work not only will be pleased by it, but will also find in Grim Fandango a game takes story and puzzle integration into an unforeseen level, making it – perhaps – the pinnacle of adventure game design, and an example of what to do when developing a game of this sort.

Thankfully, though, by doing a lot of exploration the game will give you a minor aid in finding useful objects lying around the scenarios, because Manny's head will be constantly shifting in the direction of objects that can be used or picked up. Exploration is, however, not all that smooth and interesting due to how the camera setup has been implemented. Grim Fandango uses a fixed camera system, but sadly not all camera angles have been properly chosen, because on some specific parts of the scenario controlling Manny becomes confusing, and – on a few very wide-open takes – finding the character is occasionally hard. Another flaw that the game eventually presents is that sometimes it takes ridiculous precision as to where Manny is positioned in order to interact with certain objects because their "smart" zone has not been very well placed or implemented.

As time passed, many things about Grim Fandango naturally aged, but if there is one area that would be deserving of applause even if the game released today, that area would be its cutscenes. Watching the game's artistic direction come together in epic scenes of action, drama and humor is so delightful they – along with their plot development – will become the major reward for playing Grim Fandango. The cutscenes are made even more fantastic by the stellar voice acting. Developers paid such absurd attention to the voice acting work that no option in the often complex dialogue trees lacks voice, and there is not a single object or scenario piece Manny will interact with that does not generate a funny response from the character.

Grim Fandango is considered a major classic of the adventure genre, and rightfully so. The game's Mexican theme, which even eventually bleeds into its soundtrack and Spanglish usage, was very well-incorporated into the story and it features great artistic value not only in its interpretation of death, but also in its amazing characters. Grim Fandango is funny, sarcastic, intriguing and its plot is so well constructed that it is easy to forget you are playing a game. It might have been the last major adventure game released by LucasArts', but even though they did not know it at the time, they sure went out with a one deadly bang.