Old game nostalgia II - Grim Fandango[0]

[jack]

OK, not that old. The graphics and puzzles[1] are quite good, though in neither case the best ever.

But what is wonderful is the characters. I actually cared about them, especially Manny, and even the minor characters were painted as best as possible in a few sentences, and I felt hurt when people turned out to be villains. And the fact that Manny actually spends a lot of time interacting with friends and places he knows is handled well[2].

Much the same could be said of the metaphsysics.

Update: Their bullets instead of shattering stuff 'sprout' someone; lots of little seeds which overwhelm them in flowers in seconds, breaking their bones up with their roots. Florists are no longer romantic and are normally mad. It sounds creepy but for ages I found it really creepy.

[0] Set in the eigth underworld souls who look like skeletons try to make their way across it to reach the ninth. Good souls get transport. Bad souls have to work off their sins in public service, eg. Manny, who's a travel agent, dressing in black robes and scythe, and arranging the best possible transport for souls. Of course, many conspiracies are afoot, and this state of affairs doesn't last for long, and Manny spends four years crossing and recrossing the underworld, and making a success of himself.

[1] Last time I played lucusarts adventure games I was quite unsubtle, so it's only recently that a metagaming thing about the "can't die" philosophy occurred to me. If you get stuck in foo situation, anything you didn't need to get to it can't be necessary to get out, and anything you were forced to pick up that you haven't used, eg. that was on top of something you did need, probably *is* necessary to get out.

It's a lot better than the alternative of being able to get stuck in situations and replay from the beginning because you forgot to pick up the junk mail, but perhaps a better idea would be to make sure there's almost always a way back if not forward.

[2] Setting a game in, eg. Paris, is very problematical, because you keep wondering "Why does my character insist on breaking into $museum just to get $($(attribute)object), and refuse to walk to a shop and buy one?" There's also a lot of "As you know, bob" dialogue.

Comments

[nakedtoes.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I was only joking! It hadn't even occurred to me that you might email the files, TBH

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, sharing next time you visit is easy, posting actually little harder, it just feels weird to *post*[1] data :) But I feel I owe someone, because Jennie lent me Monkey Island :)

[1] In the old sense

[satanicsocks.livejournal.com]

*grin* Don't worry, it'll all come round in karma points later. I have GF as well, although I never really got into it (mainly because our old 1MB graphics card didn't handle it at all well (it not doing 3D) and by the time we'd upgraded to a shiny 8MB 3D card I was well into the Discworld and Monkey Island series instead. BTW, have you played the Discworld games? they rock also. O, for point and click.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was frustrating when I first playing, it kept choking. Now it was frustrating for a different reason: one timed puzzle went too fast on a modern processor, and you have to download a patch.

I've played snippets of the discworld games, but I think ages ago on an insufficient computer that didn't run the demo version I had, or something, so not really. I should, shouldn't I?

[satanicsocks.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, you should. The first one in particular is astoundingly difficult. I wrote a walkthrough for the second one in a notebook somewhere. I don't quite recall why, it never got typed up. :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, you should. The first one in particular is astoundingly difficult.

Somehow I feel there's an implied 'therefore' between those sentences that doesn't make sense :)

[satanicsocks.livejournal.com]

More a "because". We all know astoundingly difficult == good, don't we?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Doh! I was thinking 'therefore' as in' logicial connection' and got it the wrong way round. Difficult is good, but it sounds strange to say it like that, is what i meant.

Or perhaps, as difficult as possible, subject to being difficult in a sufficiently non-annoying way that all copies haven't been frustratedly destroyed :)