Grim Fandango
It seems Tim Shafer will be allowed to release Brütal Legend after all, and although I really liked Psychonauts I hadn’t seen any of his other works so I decided to rectify this. Problem is, having completed it I am at a loss for words, so this post serves more as a reminder, a milestone of when I first played it, than a good description of what Grim Fandango actually is.
Apart from a few independent games, most notably Amanita Design’s Samorost, I don’t think I have ever really played an adventure game to the point where I felt I was getting somewhere before. Other games have adventure elements to be sure, but this would be like comparing the economy of Quake where you only really have to watch your ammunition, to that of Civilization where a number of variables factor in. My point is that Grim Fandango has some puzzles that by my standards were fiendishly difficult. Seeing as I’ve mentioned not wanting to waste my time when playing games before, I guess I could go into a rant about how it was easier to accept the tougher challenge when the picking was slimmer, but it seems somehow wrong to do this by starting out from Grim Fandango.
I mean, yeah, it’s difficult and I found myself trying every object on every other object more than a couple of times, but more than anything Grim Fandango is a game about the mood it sets, and walking around in the film-noir-esque melancholy of Tim Shafer’s world is a soothing experience that made me not mind the relentless brute-force problem solving so much. I think that is the greatness of this game.