The mouse makes the game much friendlier to play, as you can scan scenes with the mouse to find the hotspots, you can double click to get Manny to run to a location, and you donвЂ™t have to remember which key to push, as the three interaction options are labeled in the interface. Worse, in order to detect and work with a hotspot, you had to walk Manny over to it and then get him to look at it, which was awkward and tedious, and it made exploring locations difficult.Д«ut now in the remastered edition, you can skip the keyboard almost entirely and just use the mouse (except in a couple of places where the mouse interface doesnвЂ™t show you everything you can do, and you have to go back to tank mode). It had a вЂњtankвЂќ interface where you had to use the arrow keys or numpad keys to move Manny, and where you had to use the E, U, and P keys to interact with objects. The original Grim Fandango strangely didnвЂ™t use the mouse at all. Where the remastering effort gives the best improvement is in the interface. Grim Fandango Remastered looks a whole lot like Grim Fandango. But again, while the graphics are improved, the improvements are subtle, and you might not notice the differences.

While youвЂ™re playing the game, you can press the backspace key to switch between the new graphics and the old, making it easy to see the difference. But the textures were given a makeover so they have a higher resolution, and new lighting effects were added to improve shadows and glows (such as when Manny lights a cigarette). If you have a more discerning ear than I do, then maybe this is a great change, but all I can say is that it at least doesnвЂ™t hurt anything.ДЇor the graphics, the game is still played using a 4:3 ratio (with borders added to support wide-screen monitors), and the 3D objects didnвЂ™t see any increase in their polygon counts (which means, among other things, that Glottis still looks as blocky as ever). I went back and tried playing the original game so I could compare the new music to the old, but during the limited time I could get the original game to work, I couldnвЂ™t tell the difference. The voice acting from the original game remains the same (which is a good thing since the voice actors did a great job with their lines), but all of the music has been re-recorded using the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The remastering improvements come in three flavors: sound, graphics, and interface.

So thatвЂ™s what the review score reflects. However, my review today isnвЂ™t about Grim Fandango (which is worth playing regardless of the version you have) itвЂ™s about the job Double Fine did in remastering it. It has wonderful dialogue, challenging puzzles, imaginative locales, creative camera angles, and a unique premise. This of course leads to poetry readings, sing-alongs, and domino bombs, just like youвЂ™d expect. This leads to Manny realizing that something fishy is going on, and together with his demon driver-mechanic Glottis, he sets out to determine whatвЂ™s going on and why - and also to rescue Meche from her predicament. Manny has been having a rough time recently, though, and his clients have tended to get walking canes (complete with a compass) or foam-filled caskets rather than tickets on swanky trains or ocean liners.ДЄs the game opens up, Manny steals a good client named Meche from one of his competitors, but then is surprised to find that her travel options are much more limited than they should be. You play a вЂњtravel agentвЂќ named Manny Calavera, and your job is to hook up the newly departed with a travel package so they can reach their final destination as quickly and comfortably as possible. In case youвЂ™ve never played Grim Fandango, it takes place in the Land of the Dead. The remastered edition is simply the original Grim Fandango, only better. However, unlike some other old adventure games recently made new again, like Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded and the 20th anniversary edition of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, developer Double Fine Productions (which was founded by Grim Fandango project lead Tim Schafer) didnвЂ™t recreate the game using a new engine, and they didnвЂ™t add any new content. Grim Fandango Remastered is, as its name implies, a remastering of the classic adventure game Grim Fandango, which was released way back in 1998.

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