Some friends and I just finished playing the old Lucas Arts Grim Fandango game, which we had decided to start partially because I’ve always enjoyed Lucas Arts games (esp. the Monkey Island series), and partially because of how well it was reviewed (i.e. “it’s the greatest adventure game ever!”). In the end, we were all disappointed. We’re all fans of puzzle/adventure style games and have played several together over the years (my own experience reaching back as far as Planetfall, and takes in other Infocom, Sierra, LucasArts, Cyan, Trilobyte, Access, and Presto games), and this is one of the few games that I can say that wasn’t a joy to play.
Specifically, we were disappointed with the interface and the puzzles themselves. On more than one occasion, we were reduced to the old “let’s try everything in our inventory with every active object” trick, and if/when we found a soultion using this method, it seemed like the developers were thinking “hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we made the player do this?” without leaving any chaining of reasoning to that way. We ended up constantly thinking not how to solve the puzzles, but how the games designers wanted us to solve the puzzles (i.e. meta-game thinking vs. in-game thinking), which I think is a major flaw.
My main example of this is late in the game when you need to get Glottis’ car back from Rubicava, only to find that it’s booby-trapped with inline domino tiles, which will set off the plunger for the dynamite. Using the gelatin to freeze the tiles in place makes sense, but feeding it to Glottis first? Sure, it’s a drink and maybe making your ex-alcoholic friend throw up is more amusing than just pouring the mixture on the ground (although in the 8 years since it’s been released, I guess I’ve seen too much South Park, Family Guy, Robot Chicken, and that one episode of Venture Bros. to find puke as hilarious as people think it should be anymore), but it’s kinda counterintuitive to me. Because of puzzles like this, we ended up using UHS tons more than we might in any other game (usually between 0 and 2 times).
The controls were also a pain for all of us, but especially my female friend, who had a very difficult time manuevering Manny around (I only mention that she’s female since apparently WomenGamers.com felt the same way). This too constantly added to our frustration. Monkey Island 4 was much better as far as control goes.
I shed no tears at the end, despite people saying it has one of the best endings ever. I thought the death of the main villian was backhanded, impersonal, and unfulfilling and that Manny’s reception of a ticket seemed tacked on (“oh, I guess work gave me one cuz I did a good job or something”). Meche, for me, ended up being the least interesting character in the game, but that might be because she only has about ten minutes worth of screen time.
I will admit, in the game’s defense, that we only have time to gather once a week for about three hours to play and the game is long and several puzzles make use of knowledge learned early in the game. I did enjoy the humor and I’m the kind of guy who actually enjoys having the stereotypical annoying sidekick (e.g. Arthur, Floyd, Dalboz, etc.), but overall, I felt more like I was watching a movie, trying to figure out what the writers wanted us to do to move the plot along, while using a clunky interface, than actually playing a good game and solving quality puzzles. And I get the feeling, after reading everyone’s reviews, that I and my friends are the only ones…