Grim Fandango - why all the praise?

[Evil Twin]

[rant]Just got done playing through this a second time (first played it about 3 years ago, didn't when it first came out) and I just don't get why it's so highly regarded by adventure gamers. I truly don't. Don't get me wrong, I love Lucasarts adventures and have played them all, but Grim just does nothing for me.

For starters I hate, hate, hate, HAAAAAATE the keyboard only controls. Seriously? No mouse in a PC adventure game? What were they smoking? I despised it in Escape from Monkey Island, and yet it barely ever gets mentioned when people gush about the game, and here it's even WORSE than Monkey 4's, as there's no word indicator of what you currently have selected. So I have to clumsily move Manny around with the arrow keys to find stuff rather than simply point and click something. And some things you have to position him JUSSSST so to interact with (reading the plaque below the cat in the case, using the scythe successfully on the litterbox) The inventory system is awful too, as you have to cycle through every (ugly) object to find what you want, and of course there's no combining of stuff in your inventory either.

Other than perhaps the atmospheric Rubacava, the locations are just downright sparse and dull looking. And the primitive 3D models are just downright wretched-looking. Compare a polygonal abomination like Glottis to the wonderfully detailed cartoon characters in Curse of Monkey Island which came out a year earlier. As a result Grim's characters in general just aren't particularly memorable to me.

"But what about the story!" Sorry, I don't really find it that compelling. It's hard to care about the story when you're constantly getting frustrated and infuriated by the utterly asinine control scheme. It just completely sucks all the fun out of the game for me. STOP BOUNCING OFF THE WALL AND TURN AROUND MANNY! ARGH!!!!!

Did I mention I hate the controls?[/rant]

 

[firehawk12]

It's the peak of LucasArts as an adventure game company and not a Star Wars company... also, Tim Schaffer and Co.

I own a copy but haven't played it myself though, so I dunno... but really, I probably put the Sierra adventure games on a pedestal but god knows when I'll ever play them again.

 

[Reverend]

I think most of the people who really like it (myself included) are the ones that played it when it first came out. Yes the controls can be a pain at first, but you should get the knack of it soon enough. Once I discovered the button that made Manny cycle though what he's looking at and to use the number keys in the inventory, it wasn't so bad.

BTW, did anyone else spot Manny's new cameo in the recent Monkey Island 2 SE? I got a kick out of that.

 

[O'Dib]

Dunno if you tried this, E.T., but toggle between the different control settings. There's character-centric, and scene-centric. I seem to recall finding the latter easier to use, as I don't think the former allows for strafing, i.e. movement on more than one axis without having to turn the character.. Some people also had better luck with a gamepad.

 

[Capt. Vulcan]

I just dug up my copy because of this thread, and remembered why I never got around to playing it. It's just too hard to get working on modern OS's. Even after I finally got it to work, now it's crashing every time I try to interact with certain things. I just don't have th motivation to go through the pages of suggested fixes to get this working. It's kind of sad but it may have been easier to get working on the PSP Scumm emulator.

 

[Reverend]

I suppose would could hope that it gets the Special Edition treatment with the 'Tales of Monkey Island' 3D engine, though I'm pretty sure DoTT is next up.

 

[Evil Twin]

I just dug up my copy because of this thread, and remembered why I never got around to playing it. It's just too hard to get working on modern OS's. Even after I finally got it to work, now it's crashing every time I try to interact with certain things. I just don't have th motivation to go through the pages of suggested fixes to get this working. It's kind of sad but it may have been easier to get working on the PSP Scumm emulator.

http://quick.mixnmojo.com/software
Check out the link. I used Grim Fandango Setup to install it and Grim Fandango Launcher to run it and it worked fine.

There's also a problem if your CPU uses hyperthreading, but there's a way to patch the .exe and permanently fix it by following the instructions here:
http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=147235

 

[Reverend]

^ I actually tried that launcher before. It runs ok, but after a few minutes of play the sound starts skipping/looping and you have to restart it to cure. Doing that every couple of minutes rather kills the fun, unfortunately. I also noticed Glottis had this weird tendency to "vibrate" when his head is in a certain pose.

 

[Capt. Vulcan]

I've read online that it has to do with the multi-core/hyperthreading processor glitch that's mentioned above. Honestly with Starcraft out, I can't really find the time to do all that.