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Grim Fandango (Jewel Case)

Grim Fandango (Jewel Case)

List Price: $9.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Grim Fandango, a Wonderfully Fun Game
Review: This games is great. If you are a fan of the adventure gaming genre then this is the game for you. Its story line is great and it is a funny and strange game. The graffics in this game are great and the reflect the Mexican "Day of the Dead" very interestingly. For such a low price I would deffinatly buy this game is I was you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Surprisingly clever, fun, and intriguing
Review: Despite the game's setting in Mexico's pagan land of the dead, Grim Fandango bears little resemblance to anything remotely ideological regarding life and death. It was simply a fascinating and engaging tale of intruigue, romance, and crime that is so typical of the film noir genre (e.g. Casablanca). The game could have just as easily taken place in the "land of the living;" its setting was really just a plot device and a reason to get really creative with character design.

The characters were exaggerated, diverse, and superbly acted. The dialogue was clever, inventive, and often caused a chuckle. The plot was full of twists and turns that you kept you on your feet. The graphic settings were colorful, imaginative, varied, and engrossing. The music was a top quality mix of blues, jazz, mariachi, salsa, and classical.

The puzzles were seamlessly woven into the storyline, and all made sense once you figured them out. I admit, I found many of them very challenging and often used the walkthroughs and UHS hints system to solve them. A word of caution: if you breeze through the puzzles too quickly without experimenting with the dialogue and inventory, you'll miss much of the games humor. Even if you "cheat" to get the answers to the puzzles, don't use them them too quickly or you really "cheat" yourself out of a good game--your character, Manny Calavera, has a fantastic sense of wit when you make him do "the unexpected", and you'll miss that if you jump straight to the solution.

Despite a few CPU speed problems that were easily fixed with cpukiller.com's utility and the game patch at grimfandango.net, this old game ran flawlessly on my Windows XP.

For pure mental stimulation, enjoyment and FUN, I give this game 5 stars.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: So much fun, it's worth watching someone else play!
Review: The GF interface is classic "adventure" gaming: point and click, put things in your inventory, solve puzzles and watch a story unfold.

The difference between GF and so many other of this genre is that everything is done right in this game... the voices, the graphics, the music, the whole look & feel, the cutscenes, the writing... GF is more than a game, it is interactive theater. It's a multimedia experience every bit as compelling as cinema. If it were a movie it would be worth watching again and again. I've read in gaming magazines that people actually cried at the end of this game, it's that well-written and performed!

But to watch this movie, you must drive the characters yourself through the action, conversing with delightfully bizarre & campy characters, solving a series of puzzles as you go. The puzzles themselves are pretty standard adventure game fare, challenging you to find out what items to give to which people or to use with which other items or places in the game world. Unlike some games, though, whose puzzles are so farfetched that once you know the solution you actually get angry at the designers, GF's are just the right blend of challenging and logical, and you'll rarely have to go to the "hint" book to get unstuck (though there are those times in any adventure game this long). And you'll want to try every conversation tree along the way, just because the responses are so funny. The inventory interface (Manny puts things into and removes them from his inner coat pocket) takes a little getting used to, but this isn't a game based on fast-twitch reflexes so after a few frustrating instances of trying to get the item you wanted out and into the game world, it eventually becomes second nature and never costs you a restart.

GF has enough innuendo and film noir references to keep adults entertained, but is clean-languaged, gore free (in the land of the dead, you don't get killed, you get "sprouted," and flowers grow from your skeleton) and OK for kids to play -- though it does get as emotionally intense as any old Bogart movie. Moments when your pulse will race or you will feel shocked and angry at the villain's sheer villainy. But it is not due to fast-paced action or graphic violence, simply that the fantastic, immersive atmosphere has sucked you into the story.

At its new low price, this game is an absolute steal. Pick up this and the third Monkey Island in jewel case format and you'll have hundreds of hours of totally entertaining gaming for your whole family for less than a trip to the movies. If it's half the game we're all saying it is, how could you go wrong?

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: I Must Be Missing Something
Review: I picked this up in a bargain bin because I had heard great things about Grim Fandango, now an admittedly older title. I had also played a demo of one of the Monkey Island games and found it hilarious. I greedily slapped down my ten bucks and looked forward to some fun.

The game is fun to listen to and watch. Filled with yucks aplenty, Grim Fandango is like participating directly in a wacky animated film. For this alone, Fandango earns high praise. As with the Monkey Island games, the voice acting and humor is top notch.

Sadly, gameplay suffers. If you read through enough reviews here at Amazon, you'll find that people like Fandango simply for its humor and style; most customers admit that they needed walkthroughts to get past the game's frustrating puzzles. I'm a puzzle fan, and I like a challenge, but there were simply too many moments in Fandango where the puzzles felt arbitrary. Logic rarely led to a solution; only trial and error did! For me, this weighed heavily--and I mean heavily--against the game. Humor and style, huge plusses no doubt, should still be secondary to gameplay (or at least equal). With Fandango, gameplay seems to be a less important means towards creative and hilarious ends. You'll need to decide if this is okay with you. For me, it wasn't.

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: WARNING!!!
Review: This is one of the greatest PC adventure games ever released. It has a strong mix of puzzles, humor and moving storyline that have made it a classic. While point-and-click fanatics may not like the fact that movement is accomplished by using the arrow keys instead of the mouse, it is well worth your time to familiarize yourself with the controls, as the gameplay is unparalleled adventure game fun. HOWEVER...

DO NOT PURCHASE THIS GAME FROM MOST OF THOSE SELLERS OFFERING "NEW" COPIES HERE AT AMAZON!!!

You will find the jewel-case (no box) release of this game advertised new and factory sealed for from $22-50 by Amazon retailers. You can purchase this same version of Grim Fandango directly from the publisher (LucasArts) for a mere $15. Don't let yourself get ripped off in your excitement to purchase this classic game!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: INCREDIBLE
Review: This games is incredible, when I played it I couldn't stop. I would like it if the guys at lucasarts made a new game or something but don't let Manny fade away. BUY THIS GAME IF YOU HAVE A CHANCE, YOU WILL LOVE IT!!!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Only buy if you're a huge PC adventure game fan
Review: I guess PC adventure games just aren't my thing. I tried to like Grim Fandango, I really did. After all the praise it got I assumed it would be awesome. But instead I found it rather boring and filled with bugs. Tedious puzzles, terrible graphics, and countless lock-ups forced me to resort to speeding through the game using a walkthrough just so I could see how the story ended. But hey, if it weren't for the unique and interesting story and characters I wouldn't have bothered beating it at all. And for that I give it 3 stars.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: GRIM - PURE AND SIMPLE
Review: This is by far THE BEST GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED!!!
I absolutely love everything about it!
The characters are great. I especially like Glottis, and I was so worried when.. (oops sorry I don't want to reveal too much about the game for those who haven't played it yet).
The music was wonderfully written and it greatly added to the "Grim Fandango" experiance.
It was very clever and witty, which are qualities that many games lack. I never was bored with this game.
But now I've beat it, and I'm depressed since the adventure is over. Well... I'll just have to play it AGAIN!!!
If you aren't inspired to go out RIGHT NOW, and buy this game, then shame on you and may Manny Calavera have mercy on your souls in the afterlife.

(P.S. If you like this game, play "The Curse of Monkey Island" and "Escape from Monkey Island", they are equally as funny)


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