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There's a line in the new Grim Fandango Remastered's Director's Commentary that sums it up perfectly: "When you're making something, it should be something that only has been made by you, at the time you made it, in the place you made it." More than most games, never mind adventures, it's impossible to imagine any other team having made the original. It's a credit to every member of it that if this new Remastered edition doesn't seem to have changed all that much, it's because there really wasn't much in need of updating. Like the film noir classics it borrows from, it looked and sounded great at release, and still holds onto its style.There's no arguing Grim Fandango's pedigree. It's one of the most beloved adventures of all time, and one of the few deemed worthy of sharing a VIP room with the likes of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. For the most part, it deserves that. Main character Manny Calavera in particular is easily one of Lucasarts' finest creations; a grim reaper/travel agent for the dead on a four year journey through the underworld in search of the woman whose destiny he lost. His Art Deco world of Mexican papier-mâché dolls is a work of creative genius, from the Brazil style technology of opening city El Marro to the moonlit waters of Rubacava. Every scene is lovingly rendered, every piece of music so good that it's impossible to imagine anything else going in its place, every conversation sparkles with wit and warmth. Some details of the plot are best not thought over too carefully, especially the nature of Manny's job and trying to do Glengarry Glen Ross in a world where the best clients are given freebies for their good lives, but hey. The heart and style of it easily papers over those pesky cracks.
Grim Fandango Remastered wisely doesn't mess with any of this, avoiding any heavy-handed modernisation like the updates that made the original Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition such a pile (the sequel was better). Instead, it increases the texture quality so that characters are as sharp as they should be, adds a few lighting effects that aren't particularly dramatic but don't hurt, and introduce a point-and-click interface to go along with the original's tank controls (plus a certain pointed achievement if you play through it the old fashioned away). This annoyingly can't distinguish between 'use this' and 'use item on this' though, so you still have keep putting things away to interact with them, and go to a separate screen to check and select inventory items. One puzzle, involving pulling levers, had me at the keyboard before a solution would work. Those are are very minor irritations though.
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