3 ms·

An excellent game for its time. The remaster is well worth it. One unfortunate aspect of classic games is how dated mechanics can get. It’s a problem that musi

An excellent game for its time. The remaster is well worth it. One unfortunate aspect of classic games is how dated mechanics can get. It’s a problem that music or movies don’t really have, besides maybe feeling a bit cliché. In the case of Grim Fandango, the tank controls are a bit awkward, some puzzles are actually quite difficult and require logic that would only make sense to a point and click adventure gamer from the 90s. It deserves to be enjoyed and remembered, just because of its sheer style and creativity.

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crooked-v 2y ago
Those point-and-click puzzles never felt like anything but time fillers to me. It's interesting to think about the "could have beens" of Western visual novels instead, or at least Telltale-style story games.
- tetrisgm 2y ago
  That’s sad to read. I encourage you to explore games like Sanitarium, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I think they have a lot to offer story wise. And very little in terms of being blocked by mechanics.
- zerocrates 2y ago
  It's interesting how much this is still the case. I was just thinking about it myself when considering the new remake of Silent Hill 2. It's mostly beloved for its story and it spends a lot of time on that, and there's of course a lot of survival-horror combat in between. But beyond that there's another horror game (and just game) staple: lots of puzzles. The SH2 remake aimed to be very faithful so was always going to have a bunch of puzzles (Silent Hill games typically have had a separate difficulty setting just for the "riddles"). But it's one of those things that you still almost have to have, particularly as a horror for some reason. Silent Hill 2 is actually a case where even the "obligatory" elements operate pretty well in service of its themes, but plenty of the time games have these things just to have them.
  - I_AM_A_SMURF 2y ago
    Heh. Resident Evil 1 feels like a (well designed) escape room.
katangafor 2y ago
Yeah it's one of those games that fits the "thinking about grim fandango vs playing grim fandango" memes. The characters, the writing, and the story are all so incredibly good. I love that game and I actually think about it a lot lol. But those "puzzles" are just inscrutable.
vundercind 2y ago
> One unfortunate aspect of classic games is how dated mechanics can get. It’s a problem that music or movies don’t really have, besides maybe feeling a bit cliché. Silent film would like a word. Er, uh… an intertitle. Lots of modern viewers find films made before digital editing weird, or even near-unwatchable. The editing isn’t quick enough, shot pacing feels too slow. Acting styles have changed over the years. It can take some work to be able to enjoy film acting from decades ago. Older special effects are an acquired taste. I’m thinking of things like pirate movies where the ships are very-obviously models in a tub of water, easy to tell no matter how good the models because the water itself looks “small” in motion. On the music side, older music will be mono. Tons of old blues legends exist only in scratchy, terrible recordings. Older music sounds different than more recent stuff and could not have sounded like the modern kind, because they could only mix so many tracks without ruining the sound, since each down-mix meant a re-recording and a loss of quality. Newer tracks will almost always use visually-aided editing that includes adjusting vocals by eye rather than ear, which changes the way things sound a lot.
alekratz 2y ago
The remastered annoyed the hell out of me because it was so buggy. I ragequit the game because there was some point that I had gotten to where one of the characters bugged out in a cutscene and wouldn't move the game forward. I had to reload a save and play about 30 minutes just to get back to the same point. This happened multiple times, too. it's a good game, yes, but the remaster is seriously full of bugs that it's difficult for me to recommend.

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crooked-v 2y ago

Those point-and-click puzzles never felt like anything but time fillers to me. It's interesting to think about the "could have beens" of Western visual novels instead, or at least Telltale-style story games.

tetrisgm 2y ago
That’s sad to read. I encourage you to explore games like Sanitarium, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I think they have a lot to offer story wise. And very little in terms of being blocked by mechanics.
zerocrates 2y ago
It's interesting how much this is still the case. I was just thinking about it myself when considering the new remake of Silent Hill 2. It's mostly beloved for its story and it spends a lot of time on that, and there's of course a lot of survival-horror combat in between. But beyond that there's another horror game (and just game) staple: lots of puzzles. The SH2 remake aimed to be very faithful so was always going to have a bunch of puzzles (Silent Hill games typically have had a separate difficulty setting just for the "riddles"). But it's one of those things that you still almost have to have, particularly as a horror for some reason. Silent Hill 2 is actually a case where even the "obligatory" elements operate pretty well in service of its themes, but plenty of the time games have these things just to have them.
- I_AM_A_SMURF 2y ago
  Heh. Resident Evil 1 feels like a (well designed) escape room.

katangafor 2y ago

Yeah it's one of those games that fits the "thinking about grim fandango vs playing grim fandango" memes. The characters, the writing, and the story are all so incredibly good. I love that game and I actually think about it a lot lol. But those "puzzles" are just inscrutable.

vundercind 2y ago

> One unfortunate aspect of classic games is how dated mechanics can get. It’s a problem that music or movies don’t really have, besides maybe feeling a bit cliché. Silent film would like a word. Er, uh… an intertitle. Lots of modern viewers find films made before digital editing weird, or even near-unwatchable. The editing isn’t quick enough, shot pacing feels too slow. Acting styles have changed over the years. It can take some work to be able to enjoy film acting from decades ago. Older special effects are an acquired taste. I’m thinking of things like pirate movies where the ships are very-obviously models in a tub of water, easy to tell no matter how good the models because the water itself looks “small” in motion. On the music side, older music will be mono. Tons of old blues legends exist only in scratchy, terrible recordings. Older music sounds different than more recent stuff and could not have sounded like the modern kind, because they could only mix so many tracks without ruining the sound, since each down-mix meant a re-recording and a loss of quality. Newer tracks will almost always use visually-aided editing that includes adjusting vocals by eye rather than ear, which changes the way things sound a lot.

alekratz 2y ago

The remastered annoyed the hell out of me because it was so buggy. I ragequit the game because there was some point that I had gotten to where one of the characters bugged out in a cutscene and wouldn't move the game forward. I had to reload a save and play about 30 minutes just to get back to the same point. This happened multiple times, too. it's a good game, yes, but the remaster is seriously full of bugs that it's difficult for me to recommend.