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Grim Fandango


The NZA

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Grim_Fandango_artwork.jpg

 

This game made me play a PC game, which takes a bit for me. Mind you, I played the demo in '98 or so when i first tried PC gaming and loved it, i just figured it would go to consoles at some point - i mean, point & click are big right now, 10 years later, and it still hasn't happened. Let it be known, 10 years is the extent of my waiting period.

 

This is one of the most unique and great games ive played in some time - i dont know what Shafer was on to devise a noir tale set in the land of the dead, a la dia de los muerte, but it really, really worked. The game felt like this great balance of classic SCUMM having-fun-with-itself gaming while still being an epic adventure/ride that made Manny Calavera and his buddy Glotis seem like characters youd want to take such a journey with.

 

Though a fairly short title (but it spans 4 years!), the game's laced with great moments - for me though, Year 2 on Rubacava (think Casablanca), with Glotis on the keys a la Sam - the voice acting shines through much of the game, but it feels even more lively here, between the Beatniks at the Blue Casket, the clearly south american socialists, etc - and the jazz soundtrack accompanying it is equally impressive. It was a really awesome backdrop to some of the funniest moments ive had in gaming, and marked the journey enough to stand out in my mind, despite acts 3 & 4 being no slouches either.

 

The only negatives id have would be: 1) i know it was a more popular control scheme at the time, but the Resident Evil-like walking made clicking on the exact points Manny needed to a bit've a challenge at times, even when you did crack the puzzle (which wasnt easy; the further i got, the more the FAQ got used). 2) The game is difficult to play on modern setups. The first bug was in

the elevator of Year 2; it moves too fast to stop with the forklift

- but a patch fom Lucasarts fixes it quick enough.

What sucks is, there's a worse one in

Year 3 - the crane puzzle; you solve it, and coming back down the conveyer belt is kind of broken. Patch didnt address it, i tried lots of online suggestions - even a program called CPU killer to slow the game down to its original speed - to no avail. I ended up having to load someone else's gamesave which sucks, i missed a short scene, but it was the only solution i could find online.

Still, i dont want to put that one on the devs; the game no doubt worked great on its originally intended hardware.

 

Thanks again to bish for letting me hold onto this one for the last uh, 3+ years or so? heh, picking up my own copy now. Seriously though, i was a fan of Schafer from Maniac Mansion, DOTT & Psychonauts (depite not finishing any of the 3, sadly) but this one cemented him as one of my favorite designers.

 

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Glad you liked it. Grim Fandango is just so damned unique and great that it is a shame that it didn't to better than it did. One of the best adventure games of all time IMO, and it really felt like a journey once all was said and done. Damn impressive. I'm kinda surprised it never got at least a PS1 port though, I think it could have done well.

 

Finally played the bitch though. good on you. And yeah, year 2 was the best.

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  • 1 year later...

oh, bindy, you sonofabitch.

 

while i love that you're gonna play this great game, today's supposed to be the day that GOG.com makes a big announcement about its most recent 3rd party dev to its catalog; big money's on EA (ton of PC classics) and Lucasarts (2 of the 3 you just named). i saw this thread bumped, and thought you knew something i didn't. impeccable timing, sir!

 

god i hope it's Lucasarts.

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  • 3 years later...
  • 2 months later...

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