I must’ve played through Grim Fandango about 3 to 4 times, in various chunks during the past 17 years, and the relatively recent release of the Remastered version marks the ideal time for me to give this classic another look, with more experienced and some might say, jaded, eyes.
That being said, and while I’m making this review mostly for those of us who have already spent our 4 years traveling through the Underworld, there will surely be at least some viewers who haven’t yet played Grim Fandango and may not really know what it’s about, so why not start with an actual review of the game on its own, and later I’ll dip into what the Remastered version offers on top of that.
So without further ado, join me for a….Grim Fandango.
One can easily describe Grim Fandango as a wonderful blend of style, solid writing and above all, great atmosphere. But one would almost feel obliged to immediately dive in a bit deeper into the several details of these characteristics, in order to better drive home the message of how awesome the game actually is.
Grim Fandango takes place in an aztec-inspired Land of the Dead, as seen through the lense of noir films from the 1940s.
This 8th Underworld is a realm where the characters live and mostly work, in a carbon copy version of the real world - or at least a 1940’s version of the world - as a means of eventually getting to rest on the 9th level. One should also mention that the characters are in fact the souls of the dead who have taken the form of calaca figures inspired by Mexican Day of the Dead traditions.
Depending on the type of life they lived, souls can qualify for a variety of modes of transportation to take them to their eternal resting place - car, boat or train. Those who did not lead a kind life are mainly stuck to traveling the distance on foot, having to face the many dangers of the road, dangers like spiders with wings and flaming beavers. In many cases, these souls lose hope in ever finishing their journey or indeed, in the existence of this final realm, and instead resign themselves to un-living on this plane of existence.
You play as Manny Calavera, a Grim Reaper tasked with bringing the souls of the recently deceased into the Land of the Dead and giving them access to the type of transportation that they qualify for. Quite quickly though, you stumble unto a massive conspiracy that takes you on your own trip through the Underworld, meeting a lot of interesting characters along the way, making a great friend called Glotis - who is an elemental demon summoned to drive cars - and having to solve some really obtuse puzzles along the way.
The theme and setting would’ve been a massive wasted opportunity if the writing would’ve been subpar but thankfully, the writing is a pleasure to listen to and it’s made that much better thanks to the stellar voice acting.
The game is littered with all sorts of jokes and references, none of them standing out as fourth-wall breaking or out of place. What does stand out, but in a positive way, is the fact that several Latino voice actors were cast in these roles, which added a layer of authenticity to the dialogue, not only because of the accent but also thanks to them using Spanish words intermingled with the English dialogue, so as to better reflect how bilingual people actually speak.
One other major characteristics of Grim Fandango, stems from its name. While things in it aren’t exactly grim per se, the game is infused with an almost joyful amount of dark humor.
For instance, you may notice and wonder why the characters smoke and drink a lot. In fact, Manny’s afk animation is him lighting up a smoke, and there’s at least one puzzle that requires you to drink something.
They drink and smoke a lot because that’s what all characters seem to do in noir movies and also keep in mind, they’re already dead so it’s not like they’re jeopardizing their health or anything.
This weird mix of aztec mythology, Mexican traditions and film noir, with the help of very well-written and performed characters works incredibly well to create a supremely engrossing world and narrative. And this atmosphere is perfectly complemented by the wonderful soundtrack.
Grim Fandango’s soundtrack has just as much character as Manny does, mostly because it follows him throughout the story and does a great job at completing the wonderfully weird atmosphere created by the art style and the proceedings over all. The song list is a solid blend of jazz, big band swing, orchestral tunes, noir film score and the occasional mariachi-style song and you’ll grow to either love or hate certain songs depending on how much time you spend on any given obscure puzzle.
The Remastered soundtrack is considerably more layered than the original, current technology allowing for the more complex and bit-dense symphony backdrop to actually exist in tandem with the already stellar soundtrack. Many corners had to be cut in the long-long ago during game development to work within the technological limitations of the time. But with the Remastered version, they were able to finally do the thing as they initially envisioned it.
One major difference that the Remastered version brings to the table - besides the sharper looking character models - is the fact that the game was turned into a point-and-click game.
Originally the game featured tank controls, which basically meant that you controlled Manny from the keyboard and his head would turn towards items you can pick up and use. This made the entire experience of playing, a rather long and sometimes tedious one, even frustrating seeing as how on several occasions Manny’s head would slide from one important point to another and you’d either miss a piece of a puzzle, or simply miss-time an action and have to redo it.
Mind you, this last part can also happen with the point-and-click approach but it wouldn’t be due to the controls themselves. There’s a special achievement in it for you if you finish the game using only the tank controls, but sorry Tim, I paid my dues many-many years ago, I wasn’t going to miss out on point and clicking my way through the Land of the Dead this time.
When it comes to the graphics overhaul, the models now have super-sharp margins and corners, even though many aspects of the surrounding world are still pixelated due to various implementation restriction reasons. They couldn’t literally rebuild the game engine from the ground up.
These discrepancies are mostly visible when it comes to specific puzzle-related animations, where there’s a stark contrast between the original setting and the new models. Nothing too distracting though.
One really cool feature that was in the original game and which still exists in the Remastered version, is something that you don’t see during play but it’s something I always liked. It’s the feature that shows you your progress through the story.
When saving or loading a game, you’ll be presented with the saves, obviously, but also with a large image, created in the same aztec-inspired illustration style. The image will light up as you advance through the story, the idea being that the illustration itself represents the major things that happen throughout the game. It’s nothing game-changing or which influences one’s gameplay experience, it’s simply one of those little touches which I simply found fascinating, it looks great and it’s a nice hidden sort of feature to implement to let you know how far into the game you actually were.
Remastered special features
Grim Fandango Remastered doesn’t only come with a different control scheme, more complex soundtrack and crisp models, it also comes with a bunch of other special features, like the option of playing the game in widescreen - even though it does stretch the image - I prefer to play it in the original scale but with borders since playing things with black borders can be quite strenuous on the eyes after a time. There’s also a cool gallery of concept art which you unlock as you advance through the story but most importantly and interestingly, the bonus features include a developer commentary.
Developer’s commentary
Once switched on, at certain times during the game you’ll have the option of turning on the commentary and you’ll hear one or more of the team involved in the development of the original game, talking about particular challenges or giving context to the various sections of the game that you are traversing. Listening to the dev commentary on a game is interesting by itself, because of the very nature of what type of game Grim Fandango is and the team behind it, but it is also interesting from a gaming history point of view, since you get a much better sense of the types of limitation and workarounds that developers had to deal with years ago.
So to conclude.
Grim Fandango Remastered makes adventuring through the Land of the Dead easier, better looking and sounding than it ever was, not to mention the fact that you don’t need to switch CDs while playing - yeah, that used to happen back then. Even though some of the puzzles are quite mind-fucking, nowadays finding solutions to particularly annoying ones isn’t a problem and their difficulty doesn’t take anything away from the awesome atmosphere that is present all-throughout the game.
Grim Fandango is a classic of the genre for good reasons and the Remastered version brings it back into the present and allows it to be discovered by new generations of gamers who might not have gotten word of it otherwise. And I’m more than happy to do my part in spreading the word.
And that’s about it for my Grim Fandango Remastered review, thanks for watching and I hope you found it informative. Please like and share the video with your friends and don’t forget to subscribe and check out the rest of my channel for many other game and movie reviews, I make videos every week and I’m quite active on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram so don’t hesitate to drop me a line there! Links in the description! I’ve been StefaNonsense and you’ll hear me soon.
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