Grim Fandango

Grim Fandango is a graphic adventure video game developed by LucasArts in 1998 for the PC. It was the first game to use the GrimE graphics engine and was widely acclaimed by critics and adventure gamers as one of the best games in the genre's history.

Grim Fandango combines elements of Mexica mythology with a belief in death, the style of film noir films, including The Maltese Falcon, On the Waterfront and Casablanca, to create the game's atmosphere around the "Land of the Dead", through which recently deceased souls, represented in the game as calaca characters, they must travel before reaching their final destination, the Ninth Hell. The story follows the protagonist, the travel agent Manuel "Manny" Calavera, while trying to save Mercedes Merche Colomar, a newly arrived virtuous soul, during his long journey.

A remastered version of Grim Fandango was announced during Sony's E3 2014 press conference. It was developed by Schafer's current studio (Double Fine Productions) and has been available since January 26, 2015 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. On May 5, 2015 it was published in the version for Android and iOS, and on November 1, 2018 it was published in digital format for Nintendo Switch.

Theme

The protagonists of Grim Fandango are based on Mexican figures "coveras" used to celebrate the Day of Dead.

The game takes place in the Land of the Dead, inspired by Mictlán —the Aztec underworld— and spans the four-year adventure of its protagonist, the skeletal Manny Calavera (Manuel Calavera), through the land of the dead. Each of the four episodes begins on the Day of the Dead, and it is from the theme of the celebration of this day in Mexico that the inspiration for the video game has been drawn. In fact, most of the characters in the game are skeletal figures based on the work of Mexican cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada, and flowers are used as tools for murder. The game combines the atmosphere of the underworld with a 1930s style. The art design and script are inspired by the atmosphere of Raymond Chandler's novels. Many of the characters smoke, mostly for cinematic effect, with the plot: well, they are really dead.

Manny Calavera is a character whose work combines that of sinister reaper or grim reaper (Grim Reaper in English, The Grim Reaper) with that of a travel agency. After discovering that he has been denied various post-mortem retributions, he begins to investigate, thereby traversing a complex web of corruption, lies and crimes.

History

The story begins when a travel package salesman (in the DDM, Department of Death), Manuel Calavera, tries to sell a package to a man named Celso Flores. After this event he must go to get another client, but since this client is worse than the previous one, he decides to steal a client from his co-worker, Domino. So after infiltrating the system, he manages to steal a client named Mercedes Colomar or Merche from Domino, and this is when the adventure begins, since despite the fact that his report said that he deserved a ticket for Number 9, the maximum speed train Straight to the Ninth Hell (the land of eternal rest), Manny must let her walk. Then Manny's boss, Don Copal, gets mad at him and fires him. Later, Manny is visited by the mysterious Salvador Limones, who offers him to join the AAP (The Alliance of Lost Souls) and be able to leave the city of El Tuétano. Manny agrees and that's where he begins his four year journey to find Mercedes Colomar with the help of his new friend Glottis, destroy a major corruption in the DDM and get to the Ninth Hell.

Reception

Tim Schafer was the project director and leader behind the development of Grim Fandango.

This game is considered one of the great developments in graphic adventures. Despite being a high-quality adventure, it did not achieve good sales and that marked the following developments within the genre. Nonetheless, the game was considered by many (including critics) to be one of the best games ever.

Grim Fandango (1998)
Reviews Evaluator Rating GameRankings 93% Metacritic 94/100 Criticism scores Publication Rating Adventure Gamers AllGame Edge 9/10 Game Revolution A− GameSpot 9.3/10 IGN 9.4/10 PC Gamer USA 91 per cent PC Zone 9.0/10

Grim Fandango received favorable reviews upon release. GameRankings and Metacritic gave it scores of 93% and 94/100, respectively. Critics praised the art direction in particular, and GameSpot considered the graphic design "consistently great". expertly done. They also commented that the game would make a "superb movie". The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper stated that "Grim Fandango resembles a wild dance at through a film noir cartoon adventure. Its bizarre characters, engaging puzzle-filled storyline, and nearly invisible interface allow players to lose themselves in the game the way viewers can lose themselves in a movie." The Houston Chronicle, awarded Grim Fandango the title of best game of 1998 along with Half-Life, and praised the game's graphics as "incredible" and commented that the game "is full of light, dark humor." IGN summed up their review by saying that the game was "the best adventure ever" ever seen.

However, the game also received criticism from the media. Several reviewers noted that there were some difficulties interacting with the interface, which required a bit of a learning curve to get used to, and some poorly chosen camera angles for certain puzzles. The use of elevators in the game was particularly difficult. problematic. The Adventure Gamers reviewer expressed dislike of the soundtrack, at times "finding it too strong or not very appropriate to the theme of the game". A review from Computer and Video Games also noted that the game suffered from continuous data loads from the CD-ROM that interrupted development, "ruining the flow of some sequences and causing persistent delays".

Versions

The game appeared in 1998 in CD format for Windows. Distributed on 2 CDs, it works with keyboard or joystick. System requirements are Intel Pentium 133 MHz, 32MB RAM, 20MB hard drive and 2MB graphics memory on PCI card.

On May 12, 2006, a reissue of this game was released in Spain, ready to run on Windows XP.

Grim Fandango Remastered

A reissue for PC, Mac, Linux, PS Vita and PlayStation 4 was announced at E3 2014 under the name Grim Fandango Remastered. It went on sale on January 26, 2015.

Subsequently, Grim Fandango Remastered was also released for Android and iOS on May 5, 2015, and digitally for Nintendo Switch on November 1, 2018.

On Xbox's premium gaming service "game pass" on October 20 it was added to its game catalog.

Related games

Grim Fandango was designed by Tim Schafer, already famous at that time for graphic adventures such as Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle, and its graphical environment GrimE replaced the classic SCUMM. Later this engine would be used by Escape From Monkey Island .

Dubbing cast