It was equally bold in its artistic choices, taking inspiration from a idiosyncratic blend of film noir, the jazz age and the Mexican Day of the Dead. At the time, Grim Fandango seemed like the shape of graphic adventure games to come.
The results weren’t entirely successful – there’s a reason why the genre has returned to point-and-click – but they were exciting. Grim Fandango saw Tim Schaffer and his team trying to push the genre in a new direction, with a lead character who moved in three dimensions through each scene, his gaze reacting to interactive elements and objects, and new movement, interaction and inventory systems that swapped point-and-click for more visual, intuitive controls. While other genres had moved to 3D graphics engines, the point-and-click graphic adventure remained stuck in 2D. Luckily, both art and gameplay hold up pretty well.Īt the time, Grim Fandango was seen as a bold, experimental game for LucasArts. For better or worse, this is the same Grim Fandango we played in 1998, only with the lines a little cleaner and those skeletal faces sharper than you might remember.
#Ps4 grim fandango remastered 1080p
While some HD remasters are wholescale remakes, Grim Fandango Remastered is more a sympathetic restoration, gently upscaling the game’s late nineties 3D visuals for a 1080p full HD presentation and adding an entertaining commentary track, but leaving the art and the gameplay virtually untouched.
#Ps4 grim fandango remastered Ps4
There’s a reason we don’t see games of this ilk in the present day as developers take a softer approach by holding our hands to ensure we don’t get too frustrated.Available on PC, PS4, PS Vita (PC and PS4 versions reviewed) However, it’s the logic-defying puzzles (which I did find entertaining back in the day) that don’t quite hit the mark in this generation. Not only would it have looked great, but its characters and humour keep you engaged in its wacky world. In the 90s, it’s clear why Grim Fandango was seen as an evolution of graphic adventures such as Discworld and The Broken Sword series. The use of clever camera angles is also superb, with viewpoints regularly switching to open up locations to give a sense of scale. There’s the option to switch to widescreen, which stretches the images and looks odd (or play the original version), but it’s the remastered version in 4:3 that looks the best with character models looking much sharper and dynamic lighting giving environments more depth. Inspired by the 1930s Art-Deco style, the Mexican Day of The Dead festival and Aztec designs, Grim Fandango Remastered is wonderfully colourful and eccentric, and looks good, despite its default 4:3 ratio. Softening the frustration somewhat are the array of wacky characters that you meet, as well as the attraction of the game world. It’s a theme that continues throughout leading to frustration, and while some puzzles are cleverly conceived and give you the sense of satisfaction from working them out, others are ridiculous, demotivating and require nothing but guesswork. Despite having the solution at hand, I still couldn’t see the hole-punch at all on the secretary’s desk and only found it by accident by moving around the desk and pressing’ X’ until something happened. In fact, I cheated and reached for the walkthrough on GAMEFAQs. Having never played Grim Fandango before, I didn’t work out that you had to use the hole-punch on the secretary’s desk to mark a playing card in your pocket. That’s Manny, who now works in The Land Of The Dead for the Department of Death as a travel agent taking on clients and attempting to earn his way to the afterlife through hard work. Those who didn’t lead a ‘godly’ life however, are left to make the long journey by foot. Providing these souls have led good lives, Manny can offer those who have the cash various travel packages via train, car or boat to reach their destination in style. Manny is essentially a salesman, trying to tempt those who have recently died with a fast passage through what should be a four-year journey of the soul to reach the Ninth Underworld. The adventure begins with players in control of an afterlife travel agent called Manuel "Manny" Calavera. Fast-forward to the current day, with Double Fine Productions now at the helm, and the Grim Fandango Remastered version receives something of a face-lift with textures smoothed out and dynamic lighting effects added to give an all-round glossier look. Widely considered to be one of the jewels in the crown of the graphic adventure genre, Grim Fandango ushered in a new era when its original developer, LucasArts, used 3D computer graphics overlaid on pre-rendered, static backgrounds (thanks Wikipedia) to deliver a title that was considered to be ‘jaw-dropping’ back in 1998.
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