I Played Grim Fandango For the First Time
So being a fan of contemporary adventure games, I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how their favorite game of all time is Grim Fandango. But I’d never actually played it myself...until now. And I’m here to give you a brutally honest review since I did not play this game as a child and have no preexisting attachment or nostalgia for it.
The game was originally released in 1998 by LucasArts, but the version I’m discussing is the remastered version released in 2015, which as I understand uses a new point-and-click interface, as well as higher quality graphics and sound.
And if it wasn’t obvious: SPOILERS AHEAD.
Let’s start with the plot. This game takes place in the Eighth Underworld, also known as the Land of the Dead. Our protagonist is Manny Calavera, who works as a travel agent to pay off some sort of debt he owes to the universe (for what reason, he doesn’t know). When we first meet him, though, he’s in the midst of a bad streak, while his rival Domino consistently books his clients on the Number Nine, the highly coveted railway train that takes passengers to the Land of Eternal Rest in four minutes rather than the standard four years. When Manny manages to steal a lead from Domino - an impossibly good woman named Meche - he starts to unravel a conspiracy surrounding his company and spends the next four years doing everything in his power to help Meche get the afterlife she deserves.
Now, I say all of that as one regular schmuck to another, and it sounds wacky and ridiculous and hard to follow, and I didn’t even go into every little detail. But it’s actually really cool and I have to commend the writing and worldbuilding of this game. They found that sweet spot of letting the world unfurl naturally - never going too hard on the info-dump - and letting the player trust in the rules that are established. Definitely the strongest element in this game. It helps that I’m already a sucker for that trope of explaining natural phenomena with a corporate business-esque structure. I blame Pajama Sam 2 for that.
Speaking of which, did I mention that Pamela Segall is in this game? And one of her characters, she performs in a perfect Pajama Sam voice, which is life altering when one of the very first lines that character utters is, “I’ll bite you, I swear to God.”
ANYWAY.
Similar to the writing, I adore the art direction and overall atmosphere this game presents. It’s jazzy film noir meets Mexican culture in all the best ways. Almost everyone is portrayed as a skeleton with cartoonish proportions, and their facial features are reminiscent of sugar skull decorations. In fact, a significant portion of the characters are indeed Hispanic and the dialogue is rife with Spanish phrases and slang. Not to mention the fact that whenever we check in on Manny during his four year journey, it’s always on Dia De Los Muertos, which is a holiday observed by the entire Land of the Dead and not just the Mexican community. It’s a wonderful normalization of Mexican culture, rather than exotifying it.
I can’t go any further without mentioning the characters. Namely, my favorite: Glottis, a literal speed demon who serves as Manny’s chauffer, mechanic, and friend. He’s a big orange goofball who is, as the kids say, “extra.” I love him so much. And I was pleasantly surprised at the emphasis on their relationship and how much Manny genuinely cares for Glottis (and vice versa). In the third chapter, Domino makes a remark on how demons are created to serve, and to be friends with them is unnatural. But Manny and Glottis adore each other pretty much from the get-go, and Manny can hardly function sometimes when the plot separates them. I’ve seen way too many comic side characters whose relationship with the protagonist is played down for laughs. It’s refreshing when that character is, you know, allowed to be friends with their friend.
Other greatest hit characters include Lupe the Coat Check Girl Who Definitely Needed a Bigger Part, Eva, and Chepito.
Manny is also a great main character. He’s charming, opinionated without hating everything and everyone around him, and wants to do the right thing at the end of the day. I definitely understand the draw of this character now.
When it comes to what I didn’t like about this game, a lot of it can be boiled down to things that weren’t communicated well to the player. For example, I didn’t know Manny had a run option for the first chapter and a half so I just had to suffer through him walking across giant, atmospheric maps at a snail’s pace. There were also several individual locations I didn’t realize I could get to because the travel hotspots didn’t look like hotspots to me. I’m not ashamed to say I glanced at a walkthrough more than once just to see if there was anything I missed. There’s also a couple of just plain moon logic puzzles thrown in there and I did not appreciate them. (I’m looking at you, signpost and anchor puzzles.)
The comedic bits were a hit or miss. There were lines I could feel the writers trying to be just a little too quotable, if that makes sense? But other lines got genuine, laugh-out-loud reactions from me, so I guess your mileage may vary.
I have bones to pick with the story as well (hehe, bones). For starters, Manny and Meche’s romance happens very quickly for the amount of time they’ve actually interacted with each other by the point they start getting serious. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re great together, but it just happens too easily, you know? Just because the whole game is inspired by film noir doesn’t mean the romance has to be, “Oh, we had a ten minute conversation, suddenly we’re madly in love with each other.”
Another bone: Lola’s whole story irks me so bad. Her death in Year 2 is supposed to be this big emotional turning point, but the player barely knows her by the time we lose her. And what’s more, Manny’s relationship with her up to that point is very ambiguous, so we’re not even sure how he is supposed to respond. If there absolutely had to be a death at this point in the story to showcase the threat level of Manny’s enemies, I think they could have chosen a more impactful victim.
And finally, I don’t think the ending was as strong as it could have been. Let’s be perfectly clear, Manny and Glottis saying their farewells got me a little misty, but the pacing on everything else just seemed a bit rushed. Like, “Okay! You killed the bad guy! Everyone’s problems are solved now! The end! Go home!” Manny is even granted a Number Nine ticket for defeating Hector, but it’s extremely glossed over. Like, that’s a big deal! It would have been a great character moment for Manny if we actually saw him receiving the ticket and reflecting on his transition from only wanting to escape to selflessly helping others on their journey and not caring about his own fate.
Honestly, with all the hype and nostalgia surrounding this game, I was a little scared that its legacy would be bigger than the actual product - like Firefly, for example. But Grim Fandango holds up. Even with all my nitpicks about emotional impact and bad puzzle design, I’ve developed a fondness for this game and understand why seemingly every other human who’s played it has as well. It’s a game with a great atmosphere, memorable characters, and an intriguing story that says a lot about the human condition. It deserves to be the classic it is.
