Grim Fandango

Well, it’s getting down to crunch time for my show, which means that there’s about 50 million percent more stress and so I’ve been escaping to more nostalgic games to calm my nerves.  And Grim Fandango is pretty darned good at providing laughs for me in an otherwise panic stricken phase.


If you haven’t heard of Tim Schaffer, then you’ve certainly at least played some of his games, the most recent of which is Brutal Legend and Psychonauts.  He’s known for taking ordinary mundane situations and adding an insane amount of bizarre to them, much like Pixar does actually.  To me, Grim Fandango is the best of his games, an epic and hilarious game that delves into the world of the dead.

In Grim Fandango, you play as Manny Calavera, a Grim Reaper who in this world is not so much a foreboding, dark presence but rather a glorified travel agent.  You see, once you die, you travel to the land of the dead and have to make a four year journey to get to the much sought after afterlife.  If you happened to be a stand-up person, you can shorten the journey by qualifying for a nice travel package, the best of which is the Number 9 train which only takes four minutes instead of four years.  Unlike all of the other souls that travel to the land of the dead, Manny has racked up debt in life (in other words, he was not such a great person) that needs to be paid off and the only way to do that is to sell a certain number of premium travel packages to the souls travelling through. 

Manny can’t seem to catch a break, though, dealing only with the lowliest of souls who don’t qualify for the premium packages.  In an act of desperation, he manages to snag a premium client who makes the Virgin Mary look like Al Capone.  There’s some sort of mistake in the system though, and for some reason she doesn’t seem to qualify for the higher package.  Before Manny can get to the bottom of it though, she’s left to make the difficult four year journey she clearly doesn’t deserve.  Filled with guilt and learning that there may be more going on than meets the eye, Manny chases after her against the rules of the DOD (Department of Death).

That really only scratches the surface of the plot.  There are conspiracies aplenty, a good old fashioned gangster villain, an extreme motor loving demon, and a crazy and unique world to explore.  In short, the game is just...fun...it's fun.  And clever.  And a whole myriad of other things that of course I'm going to get into.

First: the world.  This could so easily be a one gag game.  The grim reaper is nothing but a travel agent?  Oh ho ho, how many puns will we get with this?  Thankfully, the puns are kept to a minimum and Schaffer completely expands the idea to provide a unique and detailed world that mirrors and satirizes our own reality but still manages to be bizarre and unique in its own right.

In this world, pigeons act as talking messengers and demons run rampant.  People bet on frightening and large killer cat races.  Since people are dead, that doesn't really stop them if they go sinking down with their ship and they can search the ocean floor.  The most creative creation though goes to the guns.  Instead of shooting bullets (how exactly can you shoot a dead person with those), it shoots something much more horrible for the dead souls: flower sprouts that will sprout and take over an entire body.  Warning: this video deosn't contain huge spoilers, but it does contain some plot that you might want to find out on your own.

Along with the world goes the style.  Grim Fandango is sort of a mixture of Mexican culture and old 1940's films.  There's Aztec style architecture, the inhabitants celebrate the Day of the Dead like they do in Mexico, and many of the names of characters and places have a very Spanish style to them.  It's colourful and never boring to look at.

The characters and voice acting are probably the best I've ever seen in a game.  Hands down.  This was in LucasArts heydey, when most of their games featured some stellar voice actors (the Monkey Island series is another example).  In terms of voice acting, there was not one weak point in this entire game.  Manny Calavera headed up a cast of zany characters who all delivered superbly.  Each character feels like a character and has a lot of attention and detail put into them, no matter how small or brief their appearance (fun fact: Manny Calavera is voiced by the same guy who played the dad on Ugly Betty..I watched three episodes of that wondering why he sounded so familiar).

Manny is just great.  He always has a quip ready, and pretty much ranks up their with most of the smooth talking leading men of any classic movie.  Along with him though is his sidekick, Glottis, a demon with a love for souping...sooping...cars (I don't know cars, okay?!).  As I've mentioned before, sidekicks have a fine line to walk between endearing and batshit annoying, and Glottis is a great example of a GOOD sidekick.  He's just so freakin' loveable and hilarious all at the same time.  That's what it is.  Sidekicks have to be loveably annoying while also having that one thing they're awesome at.  Every other character is just as memorable and too numerous to mention (although the coat check girl remains one of my favourites).

And of course the story.  It's a classic story with a weird twist on it.  It's extremely well written and structured and has a great payoff at the end.  The game takes place over the four year journey, each year representing a part of the game, and believe me the settings in each year are about as different from each other as...as...jell-o from no name brand...look, I'm tired, it's been a long week.  The story is superb.  I can't talk too much about it without giving stuff away. Enough said.

Now.  Gameplay.  This is where the game DOES sort of get mediocre for me.  On the plus plus side, you can't really fail in this game.  You can do things wrong, but there is no way to die and there are no really bad consequences for your actions.  I've mentioned in a couple of reviews how this sometimes takes away the tension, as in Gray Matter, but in Grim Fandango it works mostly because the story is what you're there for and the tension still manages to be there.  Oh, and the puzzles of course.

This is an adventure game after all, and what would an adventure game be without puzzles?  Now, this is a Lucas Arts game.  For those of you who don't know LucasArts or Telltale Games, they are sort of well known for their bizarre puzzle solutions.  Oftentimes to solve a puzzle you really need to think outside the box and it took more than a little trial and error in Grim Fandango for me to figure a couple things out the first time playing it.  And yeah, that can get frustrating at times.  But it was never King's Quest 5 level of frustrating.  It always managed to be just as entertaining as it was frustrating. 

That being said, there are points in the game where I was wandering around and around trying to figure out something I may have forgotten.  The game is incredibly linear and there might just be one small thing that you forgot to do and without knowing what that is, the game chapter won't end.  The game certainly doesn't hold your hand for these puzzles, and this can be a good and bad thing.  Mostly in Grim Fandango's case it's a good thing.  It's a bizarre story, it's a bizarre setting, so the puzzles and inventory are equally bizarre.  You quickly learn this and pretty soon you've adapted to the game's way of thinking and then it's no problem to think that finding a metal detector in a giant cat litter box is normal.

As for the controls...well...if I'm going to have a sticking point, it's that.  Running through the 3-D world is nice and all, but the constantly changing camera angles and the awkward use of the arrow keys did have me muttering obsceneties as I tried to get Manny to just...freakin...look at the right object!  To interact with something, Manny will physically turn his head towards it and from there you can interact.  But it's a bit cumbersome at times to get him to look at it in the first place AND to try not and accidently turn away from it while you try and find the right command.  This was more minor though.

I have now gone on for way too long about Grim Fandango.  If you are an adventure gamer, you've probably played this game.  And if you haven't, you really need to play it.  It still holds up today both graphically and story-wise and the humour is that classic sort that will never stop being funny.  Go.  Play it.  Now...I have to study some lines.