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Probably the best adventure game ever made

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 03, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I was very dubious when I started playing Grim Fandango. An adventure game with polygons? And the SCUMM menu interface system that was in every single past Lucasarts adventure game was gone? But I gave it a try. Thank goodness I did.

Grim Fandango is a story about Manny Calavera, a travel agent for the souls of the dead. He sells packages to the departed for their four year journey to their just rewards, and if he sells enough he can earn enough to make his own trip someday.

Imagine the theme of Casablanca with some mexican folklore and Mayan art thrown in for fun. Add big orange demons, hot rods, killer beavers, cat races, and the grim reaper and you have Grim Fandango.

The story is supurb and the voice acting was top notch. It's very difficult to do a dramatic yet humorous story, but somehow this game pulls it off. Grim Fandango could yank me to the brink of tears one moment and cause me to almost bust a gut another.

The things that make a good adventure game are all there. Logical puzzles that don't cause your gameplay to come to a standstill until you solve them, good acting, good animation, and good code! If I were ever forced to reccomend only on adventure game to someone, this would be it.

What can I say which hasn't been said before?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 11, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I never realised how much Grim Fandango had taken over my life in the short space of time that I had been playing it until I came to uninstall it a bit ago... The short Mexican guitar trill brought back all of those memories...

At first I wasn't sure whether or not to buy Grim. It had good reviews, nice packaging, but sounded a little silly...thank god I did in the end. Even my sister enjoyed playing it, and she doesn't like Adventure games! With beautifully rendered back drops, cut scenes which will leave you drooling, real-time characters who really seem alive (!) and a wonderful change of atmosphere for every year, Grim Fandango is a peak of pure pleasure. If you half want to buy this but aren't sure, I will promise you now that you WON'T be disappointed! Oh, and the game seems to last for ever, as well, and the story line run up to the end will have you on the edge of your seat until the shocking climax shoot out!

VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is the EPITOME of graphic adventures. No other game has even come close to GRIM FANTANGO when it comes to humor (of all shades and shapes), inventiveness, delicious irony, creative graphics and plain good-ol' FUN!!

This is a 10-year old game mind you - yet, it retains its freshness as any true work of art. THIS IS HOW COMPUTER GAMES SHOULD HAVE BEEN - and not the pathetic cookie-cutter products of mega-corporations working in-tandem with GX-card companies...

Your character (hilarious and lovable Manny Calavera) is already...dead when you start. In fact he has been dead for some time, stuck in limbo, trying to pay his way to a better afterlife by selling tickets to other souls on their way to paradise. Guess what: corruption is not limited just to this world. And where there is corruption, there is oppression; and where there is oppression, there is always a revolution brewing...

Realizing he is being duped, Manny reluctantly joins the afterlife underground and takes us in a tour de force of one of the MOST BEAUTIFUL GAME EVER PRODUCED. Immersing noirish atmosphere, detailed art-deco settings, fast Bogartian dialogs - with a subtle ironic frosting.

WARNING: There are known problems with today's faster processors. So, unless you have a really old system running Win98 you will need the WinXP PATCH (otherwise you will not get past the crane scene).

WITH THE HIGHEST RECOMMENDATIONS!!!

Lucasarts once again proves its the king of adventure games.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: December 24, 1999
Author: Amazon User

This game, along with another Lucasarts graphic adveture, The Curse of Monke Island, is the best adventure game I have ever played.The Charecters are lovable and hilarious, the plot is interesting and original, and the puzzles are so nicely integrated that they don't seem like puzzles at all. This game also gets my award for best artwork of any game. If you want big laughs, brain puzzleing and beutiful graphics, then this is the game for you.

A Lucasarts Classic

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 17, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Usually when someone says classic you probably think of EGA graphics, a text parser and internal music being played. However this is one of those 'instant classics' something that is so good that you could play it this year and the next and the next and you can tell from playin the first time.

Grim Fandango departs from the traditional point and click 2D interface and goes to a keyboard/joystick controled 3D interface. However, don't let the transition fool you. The game is top notch, the graphics are best ever (now with the 3D) and the music is a brillant mix of jazz and mexican and it sounds great.

However, graphics and music mean only little to an adventure game which is based on plot. The plot is great and is hilarous especially for fans of film noir.

To sum up, with excellent graphics and music and a great plot this game is not to be missed by anyone, especially adventure players...

Is a game SO different, so great, so well done. And so Hard!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: January 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Let's get this straight from the start: I believe that Grim Fandango is one of the hardest Graphic Adventures I have ever played, maybe only topped by "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis", which I think was harder. It gets frustrating at times, and yes, I had to use a walkthrough more than once.

But it is such a great experience (calling it just "a game" would be an underestatement) that maybe even solving the whole game with a walkthrough would make for a good experience, because it still is like watching a great movie. Not a good one. A GREAT one.

The whole game is incredibly detailed and well designed. The interface seems akward at first, but one you get used to it, is not hard, and is incredibly simple.

The graphics are awesome. Not from a technically speaking point of view (specially now in 2003, since the game is old) but from an artistic one. The art design is impressive. The sign in the entrance of a cafe, the carvings on the walls in buildings, the inner decoration in every place, the colors, the textures, the lighting... all together makes it for city which would amaze you at every corner if you visited it in real life. And you do get amazed in the game.

The story & the characters.
This is for me the best done part of the game. The characters are so believable and so well developed, that you really get into the story. It has so many touching moments, that even though this game makes you laugh so much and so hard, you never feel like the quest before you is anything less than very serious, being also intriguing and dramatic. You really care about what's going on, and you really hate or love characters. You get involved with each and everyone.

The music is also awesome. It sets the appropiate mood in every situation and it does it damn well. Film noir-like music, and some folklorick mexican-like (not exactly like any music I've heard here in Mexico) mixed with such a good result, that It makes you wonder if there's a soundtrack CD available. The music is so important and so varied depending on the different moments on the game, that it is a real treat.

In the end, you can tell that the people who made this game is people with very high artistic skills, but most of all, with a very deep perspective and feelings about the whole life and death subject. The people who made this game clearly have lived, have suffered, have loved and have enjoyed happy moments (it also has a great sense of humor). That is something you can tell when you play this game.

The only negative part is that once the game is over, you get genuinely sad, since you had got used to be there, and it feels like very good friends are departing to a very, very far away place.

A hip, hilarious sendup of just about...everything.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: January 31, 2002
Author: Amazon User

"Grim Fandango" is the coolest game *ever* even though it was released in 1998. It isn't your average game: from beginning to end you travel for four years through the Land of the Dead. You play as Manuel (Manny) Calavera, travel agent with the DOD (Department of Death) in a city named El Marrow that is an Art Deco, stylized Mexico City of sorts. Your job: to find the woman of your dreams that you accidentally sent packing. Oops. Along the way you have to avoid being sprouted, blown up, decapitated...not an average day's work, amigo.

The game incorporates various elements from Mexican/Aztec culture, especially the artwork adorning buildings (the DOD office, the S.S. Lamancha, the temple in Year Four). There are also spoofs in the game of film noir (Casablanca:Manny's casino), Las Vegas-style casinos and neon lights (El Marrow towards the end, Rubacava), hippies (the audience in the Blue Casket, open mic night and phrases like daddy-o, hepcat, and the man), and pretty much everything else thrown in (giant kitty litter boxes, claustrophobia, French waiters, hangovers, romantic tension, gunfights, fistfights, fast cars. Jokes are fast and furious and always hit the mark. "Grim Fandango" features the best writing I have ever seen in a game. This seems more like a Tim Burton meets Woody Allen project (think Nightmare Before Christmas): talking skeletons who smoke, drink, gamble and cheat on one another (some that are overly neurotic/paranoid (Chowchilla Charlie), swearing sailors (Toto, Naranja), morbid coroners, deranged florists, femme fatales (Meche, Olivia), perky coatgirls and plenty of baddies.

Even though the game is four years old, the 3D graphics still look wonderful, and the cutscenes flow smoothly. Load times were not terrible considering rendering requirements. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing (it can be purchased through LucasArts), covering Mexican mariachi, Andean panpipes, jazz and Spanish-influenced orchestral music.

Nothing objectionable violence wise, some mild swearing, a few risqué jokes and a disclaimer saying that "Grim Fandango" glorifies smoking and alcohol use along with the following: the characters are already dead so it's ok. The most clever, involving, unusual game that I've ever had the pleasure to play, "Grim Fandango" has a place of honour in my collection.

Casablanca With An Art Deco Aztec Twist

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: March 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Grim Fandango has a very retro feel, sort of like Casablanca with an Art Deco Aztec twist. The game centers around Manny Calavera who is attempting to stay honest and make sense out of a Hispanic day of the dead afterlife which has been corrupted by those who control that afterlife for their own gain. All while Manny pursues the love of his afterlife! Confused? Trust me, it will all make sense once you start playing and the dialog and graphics will impress you and keep you hooked. I've tried a lot of the adventure games and they all have their flaws. But Grim Fandango comes as close to perfect as any game ever will. The controls are a little irritating but not as much as some newer games. This is the best adventure game out there and I strongly recommend that you try it.

For Sale: One Golden Nugget For Just $...!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: February 16, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This adventure is almost the perfect game. I find it at least the best adventure around (the two year newer Monkey Island 4 can't even beat it!) and probably it's one of the best games ever made. Nearly everything's perfect in this game; the beautiful graphics and art-work, the superb voice-acting, the cool jazzy music, and most important; the stoyline. If this game would be a movie it would be a very succesful one. The personalities of the characters are done very well. You'll really feel sorry for Manny (the skeleton travelagent) and when Glottis, his 10 ft high demondriver (with little wiggling ears!) litteraly rips his own heart out because he got fired you'll even be brought to tears. No game has ever gripped me like this one. There is only one little flaw; it's pretty short (finished it in about 5 days) but I didn't feel sorry I spent ... bucks back then on it because it was my best gamingexperience ever! And now it's only ...! So... it seems clear to me what to do...

Finally I know what happens when I die!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: April 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

What makes up a perfect adventure game? You need a good story line, graphics that match the mood of the story, likeable characters (or characters you love to hate!), a user interface that you don't have to "think about" all the time, and a good mix of story and puzzles. In many games (The 7th guest, Shivers to name but two) the puzzles take up too much space. In other games, the puzzles or the event triggers (the things you need to do to get on with the story) may frustrate you for nights on end until your patience runs out and you throw the game away in disgust.

So what does Grim Fandango offer? A great story line: the journey through the land of the dead. Precisely the right ambiance: a mix of Art Deco and Mexican lore. Fantastic characters and voices: Manny is as cool as Phil Marlowe (and the accent!), Meche is the sexiest skeleton I have seen, and I wish there actually were demons like Glottis. A good user interface: the keys become second nature to you very quickly. And, maybe best of all, the story flows naturally and the puzzles are not too hard. I just played it for the second time, the first was a year or so ago, and even now (when I know what to do all the time) it gave me four nights of entertainment.

This game rivals the Tex Murphy games as the best adventure game I have seen. Buy!

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