Community Review: Grim Fandango

I’ve been spending a lot of time playing the Grim Fandango remaster on the PS Vita. Key word: remaster. Has anyone else been playing? What did you think?

It’s been a real mixed bag for me. Grim Fandango is one of those games everyone talks about and remembers fondly. The kind of game where, if everyone who claims they played it actually played it, it would have been a smash-hit 20 million seller instead of the niche, cult classic it actually is.

Playing back Grim Fandango is a strange experience. Its original release came at the tail end of my obsession with Graphic Adventures, so it’s a game I didn’t play obsessively like, for example, the Monkey Island series or Fate of Atlantis. I can’t remember a single puzzle, so it’s almost as though I’m playing it for the first time.

Therefore I’m making all the same discoveries I remember making when I first played it. Things like…

— I really don’t like the control system. I didn’t like it when I first played and it feels even worse now. Point and click worked. I remember thinking that Grim was trying to fix something that wasn’t broken, and it still feels that way today.
— The head tracking for objects thing isn’t great. You’re never completely sure that you didn’t miss something. Results in a lot of frustration, particularly when you’re stuck.
— The puzzles aren’t great. The Petrified Forest section flat out sucks.

But I’m still playing Grim Fandango and I think the reason is simple: there’s nothing else quite like it. It’s such a unique video game. There was nothing like Grim Fandango when it was first released, and there’s been nothing quite like it since.

Also, the writing is still phenomenal. That cannot be argued.


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