The late 90s were prime gaming years for me, especially on PC. One of my favorites at the time — and still nearly twenty years later — is Grim Fandango, a classic adventure game from the mind of Tim Schafer and Lucasarts. It’s an absolute gem, and up until now, a very rare gem. Previously, it was only released on PC, but we’re talking the days of Windows ’98 here. No modern digital copy, despite petitions and thousands of requests, was to be found on the likes of Steam, Origin, or GOG, or anywhere else. Fortunately, those dark days are over with Grim Fandango Remastered (GF or GFR), available today for PC, PS4, and Vita.
I was pleased to receive a review code for the PS4/Vita version, although presently I am having some difficulty getting the PS4 version to unlock. Regardless, this is probably a voucher code issue of some kind, if you buy the game, you will get both versions properly as this is a Cross Buy title. For Vita owners, the advantages of that are obvious, and I’ll add that I quickly discovered how well suited GF is for play on a portable platform. In fact, while I imagine the PS4 version looks maybe a little bit crisper, I would rather play it natively on the Vita anyway. This is not due to touch controls, which are supported, but just due to the ease of being able to start and stop play so smoothly.
Alright, so before I go any further, let me just say that if this game were just re-released with no Remastered extras, and it just worked on these (hell, any) modern platforms, I would have been not only content, but also stoked, especially at the $15 price point. The Remastered bonuses are just icing on the cake, and I’ll break those down shortly as well as offer a feature request. But first, a brief rundown of the game itself.
Grim Fandango is what any ‘point and click’ style adventure game should aim to be. Speaking of which, the mouse originally was not used in GF, but it is now supported. The original keyboard or stick controls are here too, with support for camera-relative and “tank” controls, and on the Vita, you can use the front touch screen to navigate and interact (but it’s just more cumbersome if you ask me). And yes, driving the car in the Petrified Forest for the short duration that you have to is still a pain, but a forgivable one.
Anyway, GF has a tremendously thoughtful and memorable story that sees the protagonist, Manny Calavera, trying to work his way out of The Land of the Dead and to the Underworld. He works as a travel agent, assisting those reincarnated folks that find themselves in the Land of the Dead in getting to the Underworld. How fast you can get there is primarily up to how “good” of a life you lived previously and, to some degree, how good your travel agent is. The journey takes four years or perhaps only as many minutes, depending on if you’re walking or, in rare cases, lucky enough to earn a ticket on the Number 9, the fast train to the Underworld.
Manny begins to see the corruption in front of him as his boss and peer are getting all of the best clients and there’s just something really shady, mob-like really, going on. Manny’s had enough of this “life,” and its his chance encounter with Meche, a young woman who lived a very good life previously, that makes him want to escalate his attempts to get out of the Land of the Dead. A series of events leads to him pursuing her across the Land, from the city to the Petrified Forest to Rubacava and well beyond. With the help of his goofy and lovable demon friend Glottis, and many other creative characters along the way, let it suffice to say that Manny’s is a fantastic journey ripe with a sensational atmosphere, superb dialog, and many memorable events.
Those memorable events can stick with you a long time as I discovered time and again while playing on the Vita. This was the first time since 1998 that I had played this game. I remembered a lot of the characters, dialog, locations, and thankfully, solutions to some of the puzzles. If there is one minor gripe I might have about GF, it’s that it can provide a stout challenge at times. Expect to be befuddled and stuck periodically. You can’t die, but you can spend a half hour retreading areas and going over conversations and looking through your inventory for the nth time, which yeah, does get grating when you’re making zero progress. That’s one reason I was glad to play this on the Vita, although I should mention that saving your game takes a surprisingly long time. There are four save slots, which is great, but expect to take a solid twenty-five or more seconds to save your progress, usually at least thirty seconds, and I even had a time where it took over sixty seconds. Fortunately, you don’t really need to save your game often seeing as how you can’t die, I have had no game-crashing issues whatsoever, and the Vita’s battery life is pretty great.
So I wondered how nice it might have been had the Remastered version included a hint system of some kind, even if it were just rudimentary clues that you could only get every several minutes or like three hints per chapter or something arbitrary like that. As it stands now, if I’m stuck hard and fast for thirty minutes, I’m going to pull up my phone and take a peek at a guide; I hate doing that, but I don’t have the free time that I did many years ago. Anyway, on a broader note, in any classically-designed adventure game, there is a fine line between giving the player too many clues and not giving them quite enough. Too much and you’re solving puzzles instantly when you encounter them or starting to draw accurate conclusions to the story before events happen, and the experience becomes predictable and flat. Too little and you’re eventually going to get frustrated, no matter how good the sense of immersion or atmosphere is. For the most part, GF walks this line very well, and you’ll find yourself thoroughly engaged in everything that’s going on from conversations to background animations to interactive objects, and yet you’re also thrilled with solving each puzzle and thus progressing the story.
Manny’s journey would not be nearly so interesting if it weren’t for the fantastic pre-rendered backgrounds and the wonderful soundtrack. Nearly every room has charm and visual appeal that, any pixel-hunting adventure gamer would scan thoroughly anyway, but I just appreciated the detail of GF’s areas more than just about any other adventure game I have played. Fixed camera angles give you continually altering perspectives as you transition from one “room” to the next, sometimes with a very brief stutter that I do recall the PC version having many years ago too, but it’s really a non-issue. Characters are also interesting to look at, especially Glottis and Manny, whose body shapes are just kind of funny and perfectly fitting to their characters.
Actually one really neat feature of the Remastered version is being able to toggle between Original and Remastered visuals just by pressing Select. You can clearly see what changes were made in most rooms, but in some it’s hard to tell. In most cases, the change is really just in the lighting, and I’ve found that furthermore, the majority of changes there are just making the characters appear more in-shadow as opposed to being much lighter than their surroundings. Resolution is bumped up too which is good, but at least on the Vita, Remastered didn’t look like, completely different than I recall it from the original PC version. Oh, by default the game plays in 4:3 with decorative (although static) bars on the sides of the screen, or you can play in widescreen. Of note, if you use touch controls, the right ‘bar’ will show a Pause icon and an Open Inventory icon. Furthermore, if you tap on an object, a nice looking three button menu comes up from where you can Look, Pick Up, or Use. One last visual note is that, on several occasions, the Vita’s screen dimming feature kicked in during a cutscene which I don’t recall other Vita games doing. Perhaps that’s just my power settings or maybe it’s the game, but just flicking the left stick “fixes” this minor nuisance.
While I’m on the topic of presentation, I would add that the soundtrack also received special treatment seeing as how it was re-recorded by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (who also worked with Double Fine for The Broken Age if I’m not mistaken) and the original composer, Peter McConnell was at the helm. I would rank the soundtrack as one of the very best scores for any media I have consumed, game or otherwise. That’s not to say I listen to the score when I’m not playing the game, although I’m sure it would hold up quite well, but when you’re playing, it’s masterful, and wholly adds to the experience.
Other bonuses/mentionables of the Remastered version on Vita include ninety-eight pieces of concept art from the amazing Peter Chan that you can scroll through, as you unlock them by reaching the corresponding areas in the game, from the Pause menu. Interestingly, a handful of these are marked with an asterisks which denotes “Unused.” Cutscenes that you have unlocked while playing are also viewable from here, as is the Dialog Transcript which shows the conversations Manny has been in. A commentary track with fourteen of the original developers that runs over two hours can be toggled On and Off and its volume adjusted, perfect for a second play-through. There are also a lot of cool Hidden Trophies that you’ll get if you explore and go through the conversations with NPCs.
And actually with that, let’s get to the summary…
