Game Debate #208: Grim Fandango

[Reed Rothchild | 9,816]

[Gloves | 12,078]

Hey I played this one!

An absolute classic.

[Sumez | 3,109]

I kinda disliked Grim Fandango when it came out (and I literally went to the store to pick it up on release day).
I mean, it was still great, but the gimped interface compared to earlier LucasArts adventure games, the primitive 3D graphics (which also didn't perform well on my PC at the time), and simpler puzzles all felt to me like a really massive step back for a genre I was incredibly devoted to at the time.

But at this point, looking back at the game, it's such a unique masterpiece that I've yet to play anything else even approaching it. The whole vibe and tone, the story and characters, it's all very unique and highly creative. It's both engaging, exciting and extremely hilarious. It's really all I could want from a Tim Schafer game.

 

Killer f'ing game. Everyone should play it.

Edited June 6 by Sumez

[spacepup | 2,461]

I gave Grim Fandango a 10 and this one truly is one of my favorite games of all time.  This is a game that I remember reading about in magazines before it came out, and was super excited to try it.  Played the demo, loved it.  Got the game as soon as I could - played it, and fell in love.  The characters, writing, and story, are just fantastic and it is such a unique and wonderful game and adventure.

This is gonna sound nerdy as heck, but, when I visited San Francisco, I made a special point to visit the 450 Sutter Street building which has some unique designs inside that were used as inspiration for the 'Department of Death' building in the game.

https://www.doublefine.com/news/450-sutter

I absolutely love this game, always have, and it truly is one of my favorites of all time.  

[AstralSoul | 521]

This is one of those games that I really wanted to play when it came out but couldn't because my PC couldn't run it. By the time I had a PC that could run it I kind of forgot about it or lost interest. And now that it's remastered and easily accessible I'd love to finally play it, but that's th case for so many games I don't have time for so I'll probably never get around to it.

[G-type | 2,715]

Lucas Arts was really trying hard to put you in control of your own animated movie. with this, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Monkey Island. As far as animated movies go, this a pretty great one. Cool story, unique style, great characters. The actual adventure game aspect is pretty standard for all games of this genre, either you like it or you don't. If you are stuck on a puzzle, you're just wandering around the same handful of locations over and over. I'm not great at adventure games, so I remember I used a hint guide for a lot of it.

[TDIRunner | 2,841]

Never played it, but I've certainly heard of it. 

I hope we get to talk about Sonic Spinball next.  

[Webhead123 | 724]

Played a demo of this back when it was brand new but never managed to actually acquire and play the full game until the remaster came out. Great story, characters, setting and art style. Such a unique and wacky idea, par for course with LucasArts.

All that said, as solid a game as it is, it still doesn't crack my upper ranks of Point-and-Click games. I think part of what holds it back for me is the switch to a 3D engine and polygon graphics. It makes navigation and object detection/interaction more fussy than I like. Escape from Monkey Island suffered a bit for the same reason, even though I otherwise enjoy that one as well. In the end, I didn't enjoy Grim as much or look back on it as fondly as any of the Monkey Island games, Full Throttle or The Longest Journey. I think I liked Grim more than Day of the Tentacle...although that may just be because Tentacle is such a short game. That said, it isn't far behind those games. Still great.

8/10
--
Guybrush: "It says: Ask me about Grim Fandango."
*Goes to take the button*
Guybrush: "No. I don't want people always asking me about Grim Fandango."

Edited June 6 by Webhead123

[DefaultGen | 5,668]

9/10. I remember when this used to be on every top 100 game blog post and one of the reasons everyone called 1998 the best year in games ever. But it's a unique adventure game and not a generic FPS/action game so it fell off.

[fox | 1,732]

Groovy aesthetic but seems like one of those games you need to follow a guide to get anywhere

[NostalgicMachine | 296]

Another one I've never played, but would love to try (loving these polls, btw)!

Sonic Spinball next!

[Sumez | 3,109]

On 6/9/2024 at 5:05 AM, fox said:

seems like one of those games you need to follow a guide to get anywhere

Definitely not the case.  The puzzles are usually extremely straight forward and can be solved with little experimentation. You never get that much inventory, meaning the potential combinations usually aren't particularly abstract either. They are still clever enough to feel rewarding though.

Last time I played through the game, not really remembering any of the puzzles, I only got really stuck in one location, and as far as I recall it was just because I had overlooked something obvious.

[ChTe | 4]

2 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Definitely not the case.  The puzzles are usually extremely straight forward and can be solved with little experimentation. You never get that much inventory, meaning the potential combinations usually aren't particularly abstract either. They are still clever enough to feel rewarding though.

Last time I played through the game, not really remembering any of the puzzles, I only got really stuck in one location, and as far as I recall it was just because I had overlooked something obvious.

I mostly agree with this. There's a few minor sections, like the woods puzzle right before Rubacava, that feel like they require some leaps in logic, but honestly those can just be brute-forced. The majority of the game's puzzles left me grinning and usually pretty satisfied, and the pneumatic tube and metal detector ones are still some of my favorites.

[Tulpa | 3,630]

Lucas Arts adventure games were more forgiving than, say, Sierra's games or the Activision/Infocom games (Return to Zork.)

I never played Grim Fandango, but I remember when it was released. It was kind of at a time when those types of games were seen as a little quaint, so it didn't do as well as it probably would have otherwise.

[Sumez | 3,109]

11 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

It was kind of at a time when those types of games were seen as a little quaint, so it didn't do as well as it probably would have otherwise.

Although indies and other such releases have steadily tried to breathe a bit of life into the genre ever since - and LucasArts themselves did follow up GF with a very half-hearted Monkey Island sequel - I've always considered Grim Fandango to be the last real high-profile adventure game.

The end of a fantastic era which had seen LucasArts and Sierra delivering a continuous stream of games, in a genre that seemed steadfast in its principles until it just suddenly didn't fly anymore. Threatened probably primarily by both aspects of it getting slowly integrated into other genres, as well as the ability to easily look up solutions online.
The moment I realised the genre had "died", was when Blizzard cancelled "Lords of the Clans", an otherwise promising looking point n click adventure with hand drawn animations, just a few months before the release of Grim Fandango. Even then, it really felt like LucasArts' single chance to go out with a bang.

Edited June 10 by Sumez

[Tulpa | 3,630]

On 6/9/2024 at 11:29 PM, Sumez said:

Threatened probably primarily by both aspects of it getting slowly integrated into other genres, as well as the ability to easily look up solutions online.

I remember having to buy the hint book for Return to Zork. The small handful of Sierra games I played back in the day I could eventually get through, but RoZ was another beast entirely.

[rdrunner | 427]

Haven't played this, but it sounds good.  I love a good point-and-click adventure!

On 6/11/2024 at 7:50 PM, Tulpa said:

I remember having to buy the hint book for Return to Zork. The small handful of Sierra games I played back in the day I could eventually get through, but RoZ was another beast entirely.

Return to Zork was definitely unforgiving, but I loved playing through that one as well as Nemesis and Grand Inquisitor.  It took a lot of save-spamming and a couple of hints, but I don't remember them being too bad.

Now the original text adventures on the other hand...I had more fun just revealing all the witty hints from the invisible ink books.

[Astro Bot | 79]

It was very good, but didn't win me over as much as some other LucasArts games like Day of the Tentacle, Curse of Monkey Island, the Sam and Max games, etc. 7 out of 10 for me.