Jimmy is right about Grim Fandango's gameplay failings, and it's unfortunate, because the game has enough narrative content that they could have just trimmed aw

Jimmy is right about Grim Fandango's gameplay failings, and it's unfortunate, because the game has enough narrative content that they could have just trimmed away a lot of the adventure game puzzles. But visual novels weren't really a thing in the west yet, and in that era there was a lot of emphasis on playtime as a metric that reviews would focus on. Ironically, one of the most forward-looking approaches to extending playtime without relying on obtuse puzzles had been already pioneered (in a flawed way, certainly) by Sierra, the company which often served as the contrast to LucasArts' reputation for innovation. I'm talking about The Colonel's Bequest, which elaborated the classic adventure game score system into a kind of scavenger hunt, a precursor to achievements in today's games. Grim Fandango would both aesthetically and thematically have been a great fit for that kind of "find the secret scenes" style of replayability.