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dkirschner's Grim Fandango Remastered (PC)

[July 25, 2016 09:55:32 PM]

Funny old adventure game from Tim Schafer. I never played it back in the day, and I'm glad I picked up the remastered version on Steam. It works well with a controller, though there are some directional issues after screen transitions. Grim Fandango's got a quirky story and gets mega bonus points from me for having a lot of references to Marxism.

The plot is basically that main character Manny Calavera is a salesman of sorts in the underworld. The system is corrupt, and he winds up chasing after a girl. He finds himself on the side of some revolutionaries and travels through the underworld across four years to help them dismantle capitalism. Wait no, they don't dismantle capitalism! Manny just gets the girl and kills the bad guy. But he does meet communists and beatniks and striking workers, and carries around what is essentially a pocket Communist Manifesto for a while. It's all very amusing.

In true 90s adventure game fashion, the puzzles are nonsensical. I made it about an hour (halfway through Year 1) before turning to a walkthrough, and shortly thereafter just used it for the rest of the game (thanks Eurogamer!). Here's what stumped me enough to finally quit thinking for myself:

"Sneak into Domino's empty office via the window, then hit the punching bad inside until you get a blue mouthguard [???]. Take it, walk over to the desk, then take the piece of coral from the drawer. Leave the office via the same window you crawled in through. Make your way back to the rope and grab the other end of it [I had no idea there were two ends]. Tie the coral to the rope, then throw it towards the ladder [???]. You can now make your way across to the ladder and climb all the way up onto the roof. Walk along the roof until you come to a ventilation point. Use the cat balloon on the bowl here [why the hell would I use a balloon on a bowl?], then use the bread from the stall by the clown on the bowl. When the birds come over to nibble on the bread, they'll burst the balloon and be startled enough to fly off [who saw that coming?!]. You can now nab their eggs."

Ah, CLASSIC. It doesn't help that a lot of times when you use an object, you're not standing in just the right place, so the action doesn't trigger. That is SO annoying when you think or know you are doing something right, and you get a false negative. Totally throws you off the trail.

I was talking with a friend about video game hint lines from back in the day. She never used them; my parents never let me, but I totally would have been on the phone with Nintendo about The Legend of Zelda and LucasArts about The Dig and Full Throttle, and would have wasted a lot of money, I'm sure. Were we smarter back then? More patient? Easier to play these games if we think like kids and don't bind ourselves with logic? You can get into the logic of these games and it makes them more doable, but man, it's some serious effort. It's easier to read Foucault than figure out these puzzles.

But that's what walkthroughs are for! Making old games fun! I really enjoyed my playthrough of Grim Fandango. The writing is excellent, and yeah the plot and puzzles are weird, but it's funny and got a lot of love put into it, you can tell. Looking forward to the Day of the Tentacle remaster next time.