Manuel “Manny” Calavera is a Grim Reaper travel agent with the Department of Death in the city of El Marrow whose job is securing the best travel packages for recently deceased clients based on the moral merits of the lives they lived. Grim Fandango centers around a large cast of characters in the Eighth Underworld of the Land of the Dead. Snappy dialogue and the kooky, forced juxtaposition of (seemingly) mismatched ideas. Think Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Maniac Mansion, and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, to name a few of my personal favorites. This charm is no doubt due in large part to LucasArt’s distinguished unconventional humor. Or as my wife, The White Out Mage, remarked: “After seeing all so many living people pretending like their dead, it’s refreshing to see dead people pretending they’re alive.” You can feel it from the very first cinematic cutscene. Yet the charm and instant endearing quality of Grim Fandango is tangible. Thrown together from two so dramatically different settings, you’d think this would be incoherent. Most of the characters in the game resemble Mexican calaca figures, though they’re involved in a narrative straight out of a detective movie. Somehow the developers got the depiction of this afterlife to work. Day of the Dead and film noir? Together? In one game? Grim Fandango takes cues from the likes of The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, and Casablanca. The game splices stylizing from Mesoamerican folklore and religious beliefs, namely Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday, and film noir mystery and crime melodramas.
GRIM FANDANGO REMASTERED WALKING SPEED SERIES
Widely considered to be a veritable classic, an award-winning achievement in video game artistry and narrative, Grim Fandango combines a series of bizarre and unrelated influences to create something truly unique. Many adventure games were text-based, as well, or point-and-click.
This genre of gaming is rare nowadays but it was characterized by story driven puzzles, interactive conversations, item acquisition and even more puzzles. Grim Fandango was created by Tim Schafer and published by LucasArts (the remaster was with Double Fine Productions), back when they still made hilarious video games, and is an adventure game. I’m happy to report that I’ve finally been able to play this game to its completion thanks to the remastered version re-released on the PS4. I’d caught a few glimpses of it before but subconsciously brushed it off as gimmicky or excessively morbid (shut up, Tim Burton).
GRIM FANDANGO REMASTERED WALKING SPEED WINDOWS
I didn’t get to play Grim Fandango when it originally came out in ’98 on Microsoft Windows and I was hardly even aware of it, in fact, until recently. This is why I gladly take the recommendations of friends. “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.”
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