With bony hands I hold my partner
On soulless feet we cross the floor
The music stops as if to answer
An empty knocking at the door
It seems his skin was sweet as mango 
When last I held him to my breast 
But now we dance this grim fandango 
And will four years before we rest.

According to Aztec mythology, most departed souls are not easily admitted into the afterlife - instead, they are subject to a four year journey fraught with perils. LucasArts' Grim Fandango takes this concept and runs with it, by introducing a karmic twist - people who led good lives can take a ridiculously expedient train that boils the travel time from four years to four minutes. Lesser folks are handed walking sticks and told to be on their way. The division in charge of these decisions is the Department of Death, who employs a series of grim reapers - or, as they prefer to be called, travel agents - to provide the proper passage.

Manny Calavera is one such travel agent. He, along with everyone in the department, are lost souls, unable to proceed to the afterlife until they have paid off an unnamed debt. Unfortunately, he works on commission, and all of his clients are low-lifes unable to afford the better modes of transpotation. As Manny quickly learns, it's not for lack of trying, as his co-worker Domino seems to be getting all of good clients. Feeling that something is suspicious, Manny intercepts one of Domino's potential clients, an alruistic young woman named Mercedes "Menche" Colomar. She should theoretically qualify for the express train, but the department's computer system says otherwise. This begins a chain of events that sends Manny through the underworld, as he attempts to piece together the mystery, escort Menche to her proper destination...and just maybe find redemption for himself.

Beyond its unique take on metaphysical concepts, Grim Fandango also has a uniquely appealing visual style. It's patterned after the film noir stylings of the 50s, with an art deco architecture and a classy jazz soundtrack. Since the characters are all dead, technically, they are designed to look like Mexican calaca figures, skeletons used in the Day of the Dead festival. The land of living is only briefly visited, but is represented by a Richard Hamilton-style college. The game is also the first LucasArts adventure game to utilize 3D. The backgrounds are all static prerendered bitmaps, with the characters consisting of polygons. While technology was quite limited back in the late 90s, the stylized look of the character designs are geometrically simple enough to render them effectively, making it much more appealing than similar games of the era (including its own successor, Escape from Monkey Island, which uses the same engine.) While the software graphics mode uses some pixellated textures, the hardware accelerated options cleans them up, as long as your video card doesn't choke on it. 

While the transition to 3D is handled smoothly, the new interface proves something of an issue.

The first chapter, while not uninteresting, is mostly set-up, as the metaphysics and rules of the Grim Fandango universe are explained to the player. It doesn't really hit its stride until the second act, in the city of Rubacava. Apparently most of the lesser souls aren't able to fully complete the journey, and instead start a new life for themselves. Rubacava is filled with such drifters, those who have given up on their goals and are instead content to drink and gamble their troubles away for the rest of eternity. Like Las Vegas in the night, the neon lights brighten the darkness, 

Rubacava is such an amazing locale that the rest of the game really just can't measure up to it. The third chapter sees Manny stuck in an island prison solving a bunch of boring mechanical puzzles. And while the forth chapter wraps up the story and provides a satisfying conclusion, it never quite replicates either the despair nor the humor of the earlier acts.

Like many other LucasArts' heroes, Manny is something of a wisecracker, offering wry observations while being able to handle his dire situation with admirable apblomb. "Ah, my bread and butter." he says of his casino patrons. "Thrill-seeking rich folk with a poor grasp of statistics and probability." Try picking up something in the gigantic box of cat litter outside the race tracks, and he'll just laugh at you. 


However, while Guybrush Threepwood and Sam & Max rarely go beyond the roles of amusing cartoon cariactures, there's something, ironically, more human about Manny. He has astounding ambitions - in the transition between the first and second chapter, he takes a crappy little diner and transforms it into a swinging nightclub. BEtween the second and third chapter, he sneaks himself onboard and works his way all the way up to captain. Like any good film noir hero, though, he's something of an underdog - he's outpaced by Domino is his salesman job, his casino plays second fiddle to the big-time mobsters in Rubacava, and his ship captain job is quickly ended when he's attacked by corrupt customs officials. 

He is nothing if persistant. He's not even sure why he's embarked on this adventure. Does he just want the high commission for escorting Menche? Does he truly feel guilty for abandoning her? Or does her, as one character suggests, in love with her? Manny is practically batting off the women like flies in Rubacava, but none of them mean anything to him beyond some flirtatious banter. And like Rick Blaine in Casablanca, it's never spelled out exactly what Manny did that got him stuck in his position - not many of them like to talk about the "fat days", but it's implied to have been pretty bad. 

Through Manny's many internal conflicts, he manages to keep his cool. His voice is provided by Tony Plana (who would later become known as Betty's father in the American version of the sitcom Ugly Betty), and the dialogue is read with an appropriate world weariness. And there are no dramatic monologues, or no ham-handed self proclamations. It's quite subtle compared to most video game writing, which again puts Grim Fandango in a class of its own. 

One halfway brilliant scene involves Manny trying to obtain a metal detector from Carla, a security guard. She begins a long and rambling sob story about her time with the living, and Manny's dialogue responses constantly change as the tale of woe progresses. The first two options are ineffectual, although they grow amusing as the situation becomes awkward. The third option involves asking about the metal detector, and responses slowly grow more forward and sarcastic as Manny begins to lose his patience. ("I like short-haired cats." "You know what I like? METAL DETECTORS!" or "People think I'm stuck up sometimes, believe it or not." "Why? Because you wouldn't let them touch your metal detector?")

Manny's constant companion is Glottis, a demon. Demons are not human souls, but rather manufactured by the nebulous rulers of the underworld for various menial tasks. Glottis' job is to fix cars, although he also has a thing for beefing up vehicles and turning them into lucicrously detailed hot rods. Not only is he overtly passionate about his jobs, but he looks patently ridiculous, an oversized monstrosity that would be scary if not for his goofy, expressive eyes, and tiny ears that flitter enthusisatically. He is fired from the Department of Death along with Manny, and ends up becoming his faithful companion. Like Manny, he faces his own crisis of conscious when stuck in Rubacava - he becomes a pianist for the club, but his overwhelming penchant for alchohol quickly proves to be a problem, which would be depressing if his slurred one-liners weren't so hilarious. It's tragic, then - he was made for the sole purpose of fixing stuff, but he can't, and it drives him to despair, like everyone else in the place.


SPROUTING
Beatnik poetry
flaming beavers