My Impressions: Grim Fandango (Remastered)
The 3D interface is TERRIBLE. Absolutely fucking terrible. You walk into a screen, click on a blank spot on the screen - not an interactable item, not the “back to the last screen” arrow, and you walk away to the next screen over. You click on an interactable object, and you mosey on over to the next screen to interact with it - a screen on which that object is no longer interactable if you want to try something else. I couldn’t have designed a shittier 3D environment if I tried.
The screens are all needlessly huge. You can run to transverse them faster by running, but as far as I can see if you interact with something, you always walk to the designated interaction spot. You know my hatred for wasting time, but seriously - who on earth thought this was ok?
Oh hey - limited save slots with no option to name your saves. 2014. Welp.
So basically Manny himself is the only “remastered” thing in the remastered edition, as far as the transition between the new version and the original is concerned.
Maybe it’s my computer / steam that keeps setting games up in a way that they keep running during an alt+tab and can't be FRAPSed? Let me know if this is the case for the rest of you with this one.
Goddamn, the whole Petrified Forest deal is nonsensical, annoying, unfunny and time-wasting. As always, repeating the same action three times is NOT GOOD. I got the “throw bone into river, click on fire extinguisher" the first time around, why the hell do I need to do it twice more (with unskippable cutscenes)?
Oh hey, you can save during dialog trees. That’s rare, and nice.
“I’ve been here for weeks, looking for my wife. Printed out a photo of her and everything. Why no, I haven’t tried asking the very first NPC you meet in town, why are you asking?”
The game is actually terrible about unique reaction to various interaction attempts. Most anything is “I can’t pick that up” or giving the same reaction to both the look and the interact and the pick up cues.
Rubacava is seriously confusing. A map would have come in handy. I’ve been whisked away from my hotel via cutscene at the start, and I still have no idea how to get back. A whole bunch of pointless transitionary screens (do we really need a specific angle between the balcony and Manny’s office?) don’t help.
I kinda expect Manny to start jiggering a bit when interacting with objects on occasion, but now an NPC has trouble detaching herself from a wall to talk to Manny, and is basically having an epileptic fit.
(The game just isn’t particularly funny so far)
Aww, now I’m really annoyed that I can’t FRAPS things. Manny locked himself down in his default animation pose and just glided all over the place.
The forklift puzzle is just such a huge steaming pile of shit, particularly since you have to align it just so to succeed, but any mistake will lead to an annoying unskippable cutscene of driving back-and-forth from and into the elevator before you can try again. And the commentary mentions they wanted to make the stupid puzzle even more involved with an annoying action sequence. (PS, all the monster bits so far were hella stupid, so I can’t imagine the action sequence would have been anything but)
Puzzles that I’ve had to consult a walkthrough for so far - the forklift deal, obviously, because it’s so finicky (and you don’t even know what you’re supposed to do until you do it). Locking Raul in the pantry - because I’ve been in and out of that room five or six time without him showing up, and had to wait for a minute straight for him to do so, so fantastic design right there.
Oddly enough, Carla’s story was the first really funny bit in the game. Not a good track record.
Using a scythe to locate a metal detector in a litter box- ok, that makes sense. Using a scythe to GRAB the metal detector - what the hell.
“The guy at the photo counter will take your ticket. The problem is that you're not at the photo counter, you're at the ticket counter.” Fantastic. I had no idea that was even there, hidden behind an unintuitive screen transition. Why the fuck *is* is there, if the other counter, in plain sight, doesn’t actually do shit?
I like the commentary options, but there's very little commentary about the story, and a whole lot of extremely tedious technical details about specific tools to do specific jobs 20 years ago.
...
Extended commentary on transition screens. Either stick around with nothing to do, or leave the screen and have the commentary cut off for no reason. Great implementation.
Back to the game annoying me with its terribly designed 3D interface. A walkthrough told me I need to interact with something, and now all I need to do is wander around until I get the right camera angle to see that object. All while accidentally sending Manny into a screen transition complete with a repetitive cutscene. Fun.
How the hell does Meche even know Glottis? I’m pretty sure she never spoke to him before this.
Forgot to note this - you can skip dialog (mostly) by clicking on it, but clicking on the commentary ends it. Why? I want to skip the erm-ing and ah-ing even more than I want to skip actually interesting lines.
The game processes mouse inputs very poorly. You often get stuck on other characters when they’re accompanying you, and are forced to resort to arrow controls.
Oh hey, the game doesn’t auto-save, nor warn you before you load a game. An hour of gameplay lost. Fun. You can’t skip much of anything either.
Salvador had a train ticket all along. Kinda touching, actually.
The commentary keeps talking about the effect of making flowers sinister… eh, not really.
I dunno what changed between now and... 2000 and something, when I first saw a longplay of Grim Fandango, but either my sense of humor changed a great deal, or it grew a lot less funny and interesting in the interim.
Edit:
"Nobody Interesting posted:
Also as for running to objects - double click them, or hold shift when Manny starts moving."
Thanks. That would have been handy to know.
The screens are all needlessly huge. You can run to transverse them faster by running, but as far as I can see if you interact with something, you always walk to the designated interaction spot. You know my hatred for wasting time, but seriously - who on earth thought this was ok?
Oh hey - limited save slots with no option to name your saves. 2014. Welp.
So basically Manny himself is the only “remastered” thing in the remastered edition, as far as the transition between the new version and the original is concerned.
Maybe it’s my computer / steam that keeps setting games up in a way that they keep running during an alt+tab and can't be FRAPSed? Let me know if this is the case for the rest of you with this one.
Goddamn, the whole Petrified Forest deal is nonsensical, annoying, unfunny and time-wasting. As always, repeating the same action three times is NOT GOOD. I got the “throw bone into river, click on fire extinguisher" the first time around, why the hell do I need to do it twice more (with unskippable cutscenes)?
Oh hey, you can save during dialog trees. That’s rare, and nice.
“I’ve been here for weeks, looking for my wife. Printed out a photo of her and everything. Why no, I haven’t tried asking the very first NPC you meet in town, why are you asking?”
The game is actually terrible about unique reaction to various interaction attempts. Most anything is “I can’t pick that up” or giving the same reaction to both the look and the interact and the pick up cues.
Rubacava is seriously confusing. A map would have come in handy. I’ve been whisked away from my hotel via cutscene at the start, and I still have no idea how to get back. A whole bunch of pointless transitionary screens (do we really need a specific angle between the balcony and Manny’s office?) don’t help.
I kinda expect Manny to start jiggering a bit when interacting with objects on occasion, but now an NPC has trouble detaching herself from a wall to talk to Manny, and is basically having an epileptic fit.
(The game just isn’t particularly funny so far)
Aww, now I’m really annoyed that I can’t FRAPS things. Manny locked himself down in his default animation pose and just glided all over the place.
The forklift puzzle is just such a huge steaming pile of shit, particularly since you have to align it just so to succeed, but any mistake will lead to an annoying unskippable cutscene of driving back-and-forth from and into the elevator before you can try again. And the commentary mentions they wanted to make the stupid puzzle even more involved with an annoying action sequence. (PS, all the monster bits so far were hella stupid, so I can’t imagine the action sequence would have been anything but)
Puzzles that I’ve had to consult a walkthrough for so far - the forklift deal, obviously, because it’s so finicky (and you don’t even know what you’re supposed to do until you do it). Locking Raul in the pantry - because I’ve been in and out of that room five or six time without him showing up, and had to wait for a minute straight for him to do so, so fantastic design right there.
Oddly enough, Carla’s story was the first really funny bit in the game. Not a good track record.
Using a scythe to locate a metal detector in a litter box- ok, that makes sense. Using a scythe to GRAB the metal detector - what the hell.
“The guy at the photo counter will take your ticket. The problem is that you're not at the photo counter, you're at the ticket counter.” Fantastic. I had no idea that was even there, hidden behind an unintuitive screen transition. Why the fuck *is* is there, if the other counter, in plain sight, doesn’t actually do shit?
I like the commentary options, but there's very little commentary about the story, and a whole lot of extremely tedious technical details about specific tools to do specific jobs 20 years ago.
...
Extended commentary on transition screens. Either stick around with nothing to do, or leave the screen and have the commentary cut off for no reason. Great implementation.
Back to the game annoying me with its terribly designed 3D interface. A walkthrough told me I need to interact with something, and now all I need to do is wander around until I get the right camera angle to see that object. All while accidentally sending Manny into a screen transition complete with a repetitive cutscene. Fun.
How the hell does Meche even know Glottis? I’m pretty sure she never spoke to him before this.
Forgot to note this - you can skip dialog (mostly) by clicking on it, but clicking on the commentary ends it. Why? I want to skip the erm-ing and ah-ing even more than I want to skip actually interesting lines.
The game processes mouse inputs very poorly. You often get stuck on other characters when they’re accompanying you, and are forced to resort to arrow controls.
Oh hey, the game doesn’t auto-save, nor warn you before you load a game. An hour of gameplay lost. Fun. You can’t skip much of anything either.
Salvador had a train ticket all along. Kinda touching, actually.
The commentary keeps talking about the effect of making flowers sinister… eh, not really.
I dunno what changed between now and... 2000 and something, when I first saw a longplay of Grim Fandango, but either my sense of humor changed a great deal, or it grew a lot less funny and interesting in the interim.
Edit:
"Nobody Interesting posted:
Also as for running to objects - double click them, or hold shift when Manny starts moving."
Thanks. That would have been handy to know.