Throughout their journey the pair encounter dozens of characters, from conniving a mobsters to a idealistic revolutionaries, each one memorable in their own way. His best friend and mechanic, Glottis, is a literal speed demon, driven by a single-minded obsession with driving and prone to bouts of hilarious melodrama. Manny is among the most charismatic leading men in gaming, a Hispanic Humphrey Bogart in a cheap suit who approaches most challenges with a confidence rarely seen in adventure protagonists. Tim Schafer is one of the funniest writers in the game industry, and the dialogue here brims with clever one-liners, but it’s his mastery of character writing that makes the game truly come alive. Seventeen years on, this is still one of the most original and well-written plots ever put to polygon. In doing so he uncovers a conspiracy to steal train tickets from their rightful owners, and sets out on a four year journey of his own to save Mercede’s soul and set the underworld straight On the Day of the Dead, Manny decides to change his ill fortune by stealing one of Dom’s premium clients – one Mercedes Colomar. Unfortunately Manny has been saddled with a seemingly-endless string of deadbeat clients, while his colleague Domino Hurley gets all the rich, dead saints. The quality of these packages depends on how good the clients were in life, with the kindest souls earning a ticket on the Number Nine Express – a train that makes the journey in just four minutes.
In order to work off a Karmic debt for sins he committed in life, Manny earns commission selling travel packages to aid the deceased in their four year journey through the Land of the Dead. He also happens to be dead – something he has in common with most of his clientele. Manuel Calavera is everything you’d expect of a travel agent fast-talking, charismatic, and able to put a positive spin on just about anything. That’s really saying something for what’s considered by many to be the greatest adventure game of all time. With improved lighting and textures, entirely re-orchestrated music, and reworked controls, Grim Fandango Remastered is better than the original in almost every conceivable way.
Now that I have the game in my hands, I’m more than a little impressed. It’s one of the first adventure games I ever played and less than a year ago I was poised to write a Graveyard piece about adventure gaming’s most beloved commercial failure, but then Sony and Double Fine surprised us all by announcing an HD Remaster at E3 2014. It feels strange to be sitting here, writing a review of Grim Fandango.
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