1998 was one of the absolute best years in gaming’s history for new releases: Half-Life, Ocarina of Time, StarCraft, Thief, Metal Gear Solid, Banjo-Kazooie, Sonic Adventure, Spyro the Dragon, SoulCalibur, Unreal and many more first launched that year. Among these behemoths, many of which spawned series that are still running today, was LucasArts’ Tim Schafer-directed Grim Fandango. The 1998 market was saturated with games of the highest calibre and although it received critical acclaim and many awards, Grim Fandango didn’t sell as well as LucasArts would have liked and more or less marked the beginning of the end for LucasArts’ illustrious adventure games. Many of today’s adventure game fans (myself included) were either too young or too ill-informed to have yet joined the PC gaming master race when games like Grim Fandango were on the scene and even if you want to check out old PC classics, operating systems and hardware have evolved in such a way that getting such games running can often take hours of config file editing and driver hacking. Luckily enough Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Productions saw fit to dust off Grim Fandango, give it a touch of paint so that it wouldn’t look like what happens when you try to hook up your Sega Saturn to a 60″ HDTV, and release a Remastered version for audiences new and old to enjoy. We were fortunate enough to receive a copy of Grim Fandango Remastered from Double Fine, so read on to see what we thought of our first few hours with the game.
There are several ways that game companies have approached remasters of their classic titles over the years, there are pseudo-sequel remasters like 2010’s GoldenEye 007, there are complete graphical replacements like Final Fantasy III/IV for the DS, there are graphics/mechanics overhauls like Wind Waker HD and Majora’s Mask 3D where not only are the graphics improved but the game mechanics themselves are reworked, and there are simple resolution/texture remasters that leave the rest of the game the same (for better or for worse) like the God of War, Ico & Shadow of the Colossus, and Jak and Daxter Collections for PS3. Grim Fandango Remastered (GFR) falls into the last of these categories, which has some pros and cons for a game of its advanced age.
The original Grim Fandango comprised largely of pre-rendered backgrounds and cutscenes. It would probably have been a much more complicated project for them to try to go back and re-render or change these elements to real-time graphics, so even by simple graphical remaster standards, not a lot is different in the remastered version compared to the original. So, while the pre-rendered elements are often blurry and “retro”, the real-time elements are treated to a brand new lighting engine with fancy shadows and nice, crisp redrawn high resolution textures. While the sharper (albeit still 4:3) graphics definitely go a long way toward keeping Grim Fandango playable in the modern age, the best part of the remaster is probably that it’s much easier to buy and run from Steam than it would be to try to get the original going as-is and that you can use traditional controller controls or a keyboard and mouse in addition to the original’s Resident Evil-like “tank” controls. If you’re still a sucker for the classic feel of the game, you can switch to the old graphics with the touch of a button too.
As mentioned previously, the actual gameplay in GFR is untouched, which can be bittersweet. Walking around the environment can be clunky, puzzle solutions can be amazingly obtuse, switching held items by cycling through them one at a time is needlessly time consuming, and goals can sometimes be quite vague and leave you wandering aimlessly until you bump into something interesting. It’s a bit of a shame that Tim and crew went the straight upscaled port route with GFR instead of trying to address some of the game’s mechanical shortfalls relative to Double Fine’s contemporary works like the excellent first part of Broken Age. Again, this is likely largely because they didn’t have the resources to completely re-render things, but a refined menu or extra hint element here and there would probably have gone along way to both make the experience new for veterans of the game and help newcomers experience the story and characters with greater ease.
What makes GFR a standout game, though, is the same thing that made the original Grim Fandango so ground breaking and fresh when it first came out ? the warm characters and interesting story. Even though the game’s environments neither pack the same punch nor maintain the kind of atmosphere that they would have in their heyday, the game’s often deadpan (pun intended) noir-like take on the Aztec land of the dead is undeniably charming. Manny Calavera is simply fun to play as and you’ll usually want to explore all of his dialogue trees not only because that’s the primary way to earn trophies/achievements, but because of all the surprising and funny things the characters who inhabit the game have to say.
So, if you’re looking for some great classic adventure gameplay while you’re waiting for the latest episodes of your favourite modern adventure games or just looking to relive some of your memories of gaming’s past, Grim Fandango Remastered is as lively as ever and very entertaining if you’re willing to forgive it some of the artifacts of its age. The cross-save functionality on PS devices makes it easy to take your Fandango on the road too, just make sure you have an Internet connection because there’s every chance you’ll need help with the game’s more obscure puzzles.
