Let's start this week's entry with a little video game trivia. Your question: What title won Gamespot's "Game of the Year" award in 1998? I mean, there were so many great games that came out that year and thus, so many possible answers. Maybe one of the legendary console titles? The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? Metal Gear Solid? Perhaps a PC classic? Half Life? Star Craft? Baldur's Gate? Maybe something a little more out there? Xenogears? Panzer Dragoon Saga? Star Ocean: The Second Story?
Well, your time is up and if you picked any one of those all-time great classics, you would be wrong. The answer isn't one of those games. It wasn't Resident Evil 2 or Parasite Eve. It wasn't Sonic Adventure or Spyro the Dragon. It wasn't F-Zero X or Street Fighter Alpha 3. No, in this absolutely absurdly, unfairly amazing year for gaming, Gamespot's Game of the Year went to a little title called Grim Fandango. I guess it really wasn't "little," it was developed and published by one of the biggest studios of the 90's. Adventure style games were all the rage in the 90's, especially on PC, and few studios were better at them than LucasArts. Grim Fandango may not have been as big a deal as some of those other games when it came out, but it was still a big deal. Any time LucasArts published a game like this it was bound to turn some heads...at least critically. I cover a lot of stuff that I don't understand why it didn't last past one or two games. But with Grim Fandango, the reason it didn't get a sequel was pretty cut and dry: it didn't sell well. For all the critical acclaim it received, Grim Fandango sold extremely poorly, so poorly in fact that it led to LucasArts cancelling several other releases of planned adventure games going forward. For a while, it looked like the book was closed for good on Grim Fandango, as LucasArts was acquired and subsequently destroyed by "the Mouse." However, it would be given new life the next year as Sony helped it's creator, Tim Schaefer, acquire the rights to the game. A remastered version for the PC and Sony consoles would soon follow. So, that's a lot of backstory, but for a former Game of the Year, it's warranted right? I mean, that's big praise, especially for that year. But was that just a weird quirk of a fledgling industry? Was this the gaming equivalent of Jethro Tull beating Metallica at the Grammys? I don't think so. Grim Fandango isn't going to be for everyone and I don't think I would put it quite on the level of some of those games I led with. However, it's definitely a great game that absolutely belongs in the conversation.
If it came out nowadays, Grim Fandango would probably be called an indie walking simulator or something like that. Veterans of 90's PC adventure games know the formula all to well, but for us more console focused folks this format was fairly rare. There are no enemies, no time limits and no life bars. You can't die and the game doesn't move forward until you make it. Instead of skill with the sticks, Grim Fandango asks you to use critical thinking, logic and investigative skills to solve puzzles and rectify various situations. It's modern equivalents would probably be stuff like Life is Strange or What Remains of Edith Finch, although it's a bit more rooted in puzzle solving than those two games, which focus predominately on their narratives. Of course, Grim Fandango has plenty of narrative to follow. The game puts you in the shoes of Manny Calavera, a travel agent at the Department of Death in El Marrow City. El Marrow is part of the Land of the Dead, the eighth underworld where the recently deceased aim to make their way to the Land of Eternal Rest, or ninth underworld. It's Manny's job to make sure these recently arrived souls are provided the correct transportation package for the trip. You see, the quality of your trip from the eighth underworld to the ninth is determined by what kind of person you were in life. For the truly good people, a quick, four-minute trip on the Number 9 train is all it will take. But for bad people? A brutal, agonizing walk across the Land of The Dead that will last a minimum of four years. Most of those people never do make it to the ninth underworld, opting to give up and resign themselves to un-lives in the eighth. Manny's job is relatively uneventful until one day, he comes across a client named Mercedes Colomar. The woman, who Manny calls Meche, has led a pure, good, wholesome life. So Manny is surprised when the Department of Death computers determine that she must make the four-year trek on foot. Suspecting something is up, Manny goes to confront his boss, Don Copal, and finds himself thrown in prison after Meche takes off on the journey by herself. His incarceration is short lived, as Manny is freed by Salvador Limones, leader of the Lost Souls Alliance. Limones confirms what Manny had already believed, that something is not right within the DOD and there is a conspiracy afoot. Manny sets out, alongside his friend Glottis, to find Meche and put an end to the injustices that are taking place in the Land of the Dead.
The gameplay is very simple, Manny can move and interact with items and that's about it. Grim Fandango differs from its 2D predecessors in that it lacks an HUD and you don't determine which objects you can interact with by clicking them. Instead, Manny will turn his head and look at useable objects. That sounds like it would be a major pain, but it actually works quite well and I never once had a problem determining where he was looking. Conversations with various characters will take place via text trees and are critical for advancing the story and obtaining information. The game is broken up into four chapters, with each taking place on Nov. 2nd, Day of the Dead, over the course of four years. Each of these take place in a new location and are relatively long if you do them blindly. Of course, you could look up a walkthrough and beat the game in a manner of minutes, but, like, why? Each area has a variety of puzzles and chains of events that need to be completed to move on, as is typical of the genre. There are the occasional issues here, it isn't always perfectly clear where you are supposed to go, but Grim Fandango does a good job of at least keeping you in some semblance of the right direction. Some of these adventure games are extremely obtuse, but most of the solutions and correct paths here make some level of sense when you really think about them. The movement control is a little wonky, it's kind of loose and not always the most responsive. But this isn't a big deal here because, again, you can't get hit by enemies or fall of ledges or die in any other way. It's easy to actually pick up and play, but difficult to actually complete, which is kind of how these games should be. I think Grim Fandango is a good entry point into the adventure genre in that regard, it's not too easy but it also doesn't require the extreme use of "video game logic" (you all know exactly what I'm talking about) that other LucasArts adventures do.
The biggest appeal here might be the art style, it's just so unique from what you would have seen back then, or even today. The characters and visuals take inspiration from Mexican culture, they look kind of like Calacas that are frequently used to celebrate Day of the Dead. Everything has a certain silliness to it while still respecting the traditions on which it is based. The locales also draw from old school film noir, with references to a number of classic films. The town of Rubicava especially looks like it came straight out of a 50's mobster movie. The characters are all so cleverly designed, and the writing is excellent, Manny especially. His conversation options are organic and real and he's great in both the serious and comical situations (run you pigeons! it's Robert Frost!). His companion Glottis is the perfect sidekick and his smarmy co-worker Domino, who gets all the good accounts at the DOD, is a great antagonist. The world building here is excellent, the towns of the eighth underworld are all thriving, if a bit sketchy, communities filled with lost souls who just couldn't complete their trip. The world is populated by demons, who are summoned to perform various labors that the residents don't want to do. Glottis, for example, is a speed demon, he exists solely to drive and drive fast, something that will come into play later in the game. The underworld is bleak, but its denizens still have many hopes, dreams and fears. Fear? What's to fear when you are already dead? Being sprouted. Bullets can't hurt anyone here, but the baddies carry plant guns that they can use to eliminate their competition, turning them into flowers that gradually break down their bones. Grim Fandango is filled with stuff like that, clever little references and worldbuilding quirks that make it stand out amongst good or even great games. For a game about dead people, it certainly feels very, very alive.
Of course, Grim Fandango isn't perfect. There are the occasional spots where the game does get a little hard to follow, though not nearly as often as some of its contemporaries. We aren't attaching a wad of gum to a stick to fish a key out of a sewer or anything, but there are still a handful of things that are problematic. Again, these kinds of games are most certainly not for everyone. If you want a game where you are gunning down hordes of enemies or speeding through space, you need to look elsewhere. Grim Fandango actually cuts a pretty quick pace for its genre, but that isn't saying much. The graphics overall are strong, but there are the occasional hiccups and some really weird clipping at some points. But the biggest issue, and it's a huge one, is a glitch I found that can lock you out of the game completely. Full disclosure, I played the remastered version so I don't know if this is in the original, but there is a point in the last chapter where a certain NPC might not behave the way he is supposed to and if you saved your game in the room where he is supposed to meet you, you are locked out for good. Like, new save file start over locked out. This happens very, very close to the end of the game, it would still be unacceptable in the first hour but it's made downright cruel by the fact it occurs in the last. Even more full disclosure, this happened to me and I had to look up the last 30 minutes or so of the game on Youtube. I don't like doing that, but even for a great game I don't have time to play through it again, especially for something like that.
But, at the end of the day, Grim Fandango is a great game. I don't quite have it in my top 100 like some of those other games that released in 1998, but I definitely put it in the top 200, if not the top 150. It may be comparatively slow paced, but I like stuff like this that taxes your brain power more than your controller skills. I always thought these kinds of games were a good balance between cinematic and gameplay focused. If you are into stuff like Gone Home, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch or games like that, Grim Fandango is something of a spiritual predecessor to those titles. But I've always felt GF offered a little bit more in the actual gameplay department than those titles. It had a fun art style, quirky characters and a great story like its successors, but it almost feels like it made more of an effort to actually make itself a videogame that was cinematic rather than a movie with gameplay elements. This game absolutely belongs in the conversation with all of those iconic titles from 1998 as all-time classics. It's also a great entry title for gamers looking to get into the adventure genre, as it's a bit more fast paced than its contemporaries (though again, that isn't saying much). It's also a great game to play with non-gamers. Overall, Grim Fandango is great and I highly recommend it for anyone looking to experience a good, fun story with some interactivity. Just watch out for that nasty glitch.
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