an adventure game? who wants to play one fo those? (well, i do actually.)
User Rating: 10 | Grim Fandango PC
The true adventure game genre started way back a long time ago with a company called Infocom.... ever hear of them? The first title was Zork, hear about that at least? The idea was simple: Go here, use this object on this item, solve this puzzle, ect. Adventure games required you to use you're head. in time, the adventure game expanded. Soon, we had King's quest, Space Quest, Adventure of Monkey island, and many others. Well Im sorry to say the Adventure game as we all knew and loved it is a dying Genre. But before it drops off the face of the earth, Lucas Arts (yes the Star Wars people) brought us one last good adventure game. Grim Fandango. Its as funny as it is beautiful. Based loosely on Mayan mythology, all the characters in the game are skeletons ala a Day of the Dead festival. in fact, the game takes place during the day of the dead. you assume the role of Manny Calavera, a lowly worker bee in the DoD (department of Death... this is the Afterlife you know) Who stumbles upon a crime of epic proportions... and a woman who gives him the cold shoulder. How do they relate to each other? Well, you'll just have to play the game to find out. You cant die in the game (you're already dead anyway), so the object is to solve the puzzles which range from simple to annoying (Note to any Lucas arts people who may be reading this... That safe-cracking puzzle in year 3? I'll get you for that!) Graphically the game is fantastic. Rather than go the polygonal route as some have, lucasArts went for prerendered backgrounds ala resident evil. the result is a MUCH sharper/cleaner look than normal, and it allows the computer to spend all its time focusing on character animations. Characters, though they are skeletons, are EASILY identifyable. Bad skeletons look bad, Good skeletons look good, and sexy skeletoons look like Callista Flockhart (No offense to all Ally fans, one of which I am. Note to Calista: EAT A COOKIE!) Sound is incredible! the Music is never annoying, and the voice acting is dead on accurate (no pun intended) Controls are simple, and the interface is fantastic. The story is good too, I just wish I could have gotten that lawyer. Graphics-10: Sharp! Colorful! Mayan themes run rampant with A touch of Noir. Sound-10: My only regret is I cannot steal the music from the game to play in my car on the way to work. Camera-10: never a problem, always in the right spot. Playabilty/Replayability-10: Perfect. Though once you play it thru, you see little point in doing it again. Overall-10: buy this game, or you'll regret it.
