Zeusthecat

The Big LucasArts Playthrough

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Really enjoyed reading you playing through Curse, glad you liked it so much. Enjoy Grim Fandango, I certainly did. Don't want to set your expectations too high so I'll leave it at that.

 

I believe ResidualVM is the best way to run Grim. I've had audio stuttering issues with it, but they may have fixed that. I think the best way to play it is to run it full screen and to force your monitor into 4:3 using your video card.

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I just played Grim all the way through with Residual and it ran fine, except once or twice it froze up and I needed to press '.' (ie the period or full stop key) to get it going again. Best to save often and in different slots, though, just in case.

 

I had fullscreen ticked in Residual and didn't need to do any extra tinkering.

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Within the game world, for sure it was just a curse, since all the MI games afterwards took place in the Caribbean world with Guybrush as an adult. As for the original intention Gilbert had, it's anyone's guess.

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Within the game world, for sure it was just a curse, since all the MI games afterwards took place in the Caribbean world with Guybrush as an adult. As for the original intention Gilbert had, it's anyone's guess.

 

It's not anyone's guess though, as he told me that it was going to involve adult Guybrush. And a few other things too... :P

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Just finished Grim Fandango myself, actually - I'm very curious to see how Zeus feels about it, because I've cooled on it significantly.

 

Blasphemy!

 

Having done my own playthrough recently, I find it holds up marvelously.  That's not to say it's flawless, but the problems I have with it are the same ones I've always had, and mostly come down to some evil puzzles.  It was always every other element but the puzzle design (which is still extremely solid, just not up there with LEC's best) that took Grim to the next level.  Even the visuals still hold their own, since the team was smart enough to marry the now dated technology with a logical art style (i.e. blocky 3D isn't jarring if the characters are supposed to look like paper mache dolls), plus the pre-rendered backgrounds are beautifully done.

 

Visually, The Curse of Monkey Island holds up the best of the LEC games for obvious reasons.

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Again, I'm not too worried about sub par controls or a few bad puzzles ruining my enjoyment of this game. Between the discussions on the podcast and the things people have said here, the hype has been pretty high for most of these games and every single one of them still exceeded my expectations. Plus, I've gone back to N64 era games many times and have never been bothered by the more primitive 3d controls or blocky graphics that they typically have.

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Grim has some of my most loved and most hated puzzles.  I've mentioned it before, but the Grim Fandango puzzle design document is one of my favorite things ever.  Obviously Zeus will want to avoid it until after finishing the game, but I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who hasn't seen it.

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It's an invaluable peek under the hood.  It's also still comical to think that the marketing department nixed "Deeds of the Dead" for the title only to sign off on Grim Fandango.

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Whenever I hear the word "Fandango" I always think of those talking paper bag puppets from movie theaters in the late 90's.

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It's a cool name, but it's so esoteric and weird, it's hard to imagine it helping units propel off the store shelves.  "Deeds of the Dead" is pulpy enough to make someone pull out the box and see the cool skeleton characters and realize they get to play as the grim reaper.  That's the selling point.

 

It's like with Psychonauts - as bananas as the games are, there are good marketing hooks.  They just weren't successfully exploited.

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It's an invaluable peek under the hood.  It's also still comical to think that the marketing department nixed "Deeds of the Dead" for the title only to sign off on Grim Fandango.

 

I'm so glad they didn't compromise and colon that title.

 

Grim Fandango: Deeds of the Dead

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Blasphemy!

 

Having done my own playthrough recently, I find it holds up marvelously.  That's not to say it's flawless, but the problems I have with it are the same ones I've always had, and mostly come down to some evil puzzles.  It was always every other element but the puzzle design (which is still extremely solid, just not up there with LEC's best) that took Grim to the next level.  

 

I think there were a few puzzles I found unreasonable - a great bulk of the puzzles were fine. The art style is great, but what's supposedly memorable is the story.

I feel like it goes all to hell after about Year 3, where they've established that Manny is a crooked man with a heart of gold, and then try and have their cake and eat it too. Manny steals and manipulates everyone around him to get what he wants, and the game increasingly stops acknowledging that because he's supposedly not as bad as the bad guys. Year 4 really needed a clear statement that yes, Manny has done some bad things, but he's a broken man that keeps returning to what he knows works, and he tries to make it up to the people he hurts. Hector just hurts people - except that everyone in the city he should be hurting seem to have done pretty well from Hector's influence. We don't see enough people in El Marrow for there to be room for the victims.

 

It keeps prevaricating over how much danger Manny's in, as well - first Hector tries to kill you, then Domino gives you the run of the joint. And the solution is to sail off without him instead of trapping him or finishing him off?

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There aren't any difficulty modes. I think you can change the controls from character-sensitive to screen-sensitive, but with the constantly changing camera angles I wouldn't recommend it. Also, the tank controls aren't so bad if you resist the urge to run everywhere.

I usually play the game with screen sensitive controls, and besides the minor annoyances when screens change and you are going the wrong direction, overall I find it easier to control. But I would guess Zeus should give both a try.

 

Honestly I think they're more fun married; usually writers avoid it because all the fun goes out of the relationship, but Elaine got more interesting and now their arguments have some stakes to them.

 really have the marriage angle in both Curse and Escape. Curse she's so damsel in distress and in Escape it's all played up like an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Blech.

 

Tales did it right for once, I think.

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Well, Curse's story condemned Elaine to be a gold statue for most of the game. And they cut out her big scene in the climax where she supposedly fights off an army of skeletons single-handedly, so.

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Escape hardly counts for anything. Tales of Monkey Island is mostly what I'm judging off, and she's good fun there.

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Elaine had some fun stuff in Escape.  One of the funniest parts was toward the end of the game when Guybrush says, "Somehow, I always knew it would end like this," and she just sincerely goes "...Really?"

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Here's a scan of the missing scene from CMI:

936full-the-curse-of-monkey-island-artwo

 

I would have felt better about her character (and the end plot) if this had made it in.

 

I scanned this page a long time ago, I wonder if this is my scan that's been floating around or someone elses...

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I enjoy the dynamic they have as a duo that Elaine is clearly more generally competent but Guybrush is occasionally amazing.

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That's not the only cutscene that got dropped from the game.  A  full-fledged dance number taking place upon the yard-arms of the Threepwood honeymoon ship would have been performed by Guybrush and Elaine for the end credits.  Chuck Jordan's lyrics to "Plank of Love" are available http://miwiki.net/Plank_of_Love'>here.

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It's not anyone's guess though, as he told me that it was going to involve adult Guybrush. And a few other things too... :P

...WELL?????

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I finally started

 

Grim Fandango

 

After the opening sequence, I went to work familiarizing myself with the controls and the environment. I examined a bunch of stuff, picked up a deck of cards in Manny's office, and talked to the receptionist up front (and punched a hole in one of my cards) before heading into a big garage area. Once in the garage, I made my way to the back where I met a giant talking dog creature. While exploring this area and talking to the dog dude, I learned that I am apparently not allowed to drive in this world and must have a driver take me to the land of the living to sell travel packages to newly deceased people. Unfortunately my boss gave my driver the day off, leaving me no way to fulfill my quota, so I tried to convince the dog dude to drive me to my destination. He was hesitant at first but agreed to do it if I could get my boss to sign off on it. With this new goal in mind, I made my way outside to continue exploring.

 

Once I made my way outside, I walked to the end of the street where there were some tents and a dude making balloon animals with a big Day of the Dead celebration going on in the background (also worth mentioning I found the music and ambient sounds in this area to be quite amazing). I talked to the balloon animal guy and got him to make me several balloon animals before heading over to an adjacent tent to pick up a few bread loaves. From there, I made my way back up the street a little ways and into an alley where there was a makeshift rope hanging down from a window that was several stories up. I climbed up the rope and was able to climb into my boss's office through an open window. I snooped around a little bit and found the solution to my first puzzle when I tried using his computer. Apparently he had it rigged up to automatically give a certain reply whenever the receptionist bothered him with something; so I simply set it to give the "just sign the document for me" reply and headed back down to talk to the receptionist.

 

After making my way back downstairs, I gave the form I needed signed to the receptionist and she signed it per the automatic response I set up. With the paper signed, I went back to my big dog friend and we took off to the land of the living.

 

After arriving at our destination, I was completely taken aback by the way the living world was represented. There was something about this segment that was just creepy, amazing, and thought provoking. I investigated all of the real world objects and people in the area and gathered that my presence there was limited to the instant in time that the dude died (from food poisoning apparently?). My favorite thing about this segment though, was the way I could say some weird and disturbing things to the people and see their faces briefly contort as they seemed to subconsciously comprehend the things I was saying. Finally, after I finished poking around at stuff, I used my scythe to rip open the sack that the dead dude was in (I assume the game is establishing that that is what the grim reaper uses that scythe for) and proceeded to fail miserably at selling him a good travel package. Since he was adamant about wanting the cheapest package, I obliged and stuffed him in a coffin before filling it with some kind of foam so he could be shipped off or something like that.

 

I explored a little bit more after packing up the douchebag guy and was finally able to go into the office that was adjacent to mine (my former office) and talk to the dude in there. He seemed nice enough and let me have a few drinks but despite that, Manny still seemed to have a bit of a grudge against the guy. After I was finished looking around in his office, I went back through the other areas and found that the dog guy wasn't in the garage any more and my boss's window was now closed. I tried using a few items here and there but didn't manage to make any more progress and, after a short while, I stopped playing for the evening.

 

So far my thoughts on the game are very positive overall. You guys weren't joking about the controls though, they are pretty damn terrible. At this point I'm at least able to get them to work well enough to do what I want but I'm still struggling a bit with Manny suddenly veering left or right when I expect him to go straight due to the invisible wall near the edge of each area that seems to automatically divert his trajectory when you touch it. I tried both control methods and I think I'll be sticking with the player relative controls just because I prefer to not have him suddenly change directions when I transition to a new area. After a couple of hours, I found that I was having a much easier time controlling him so I expect my frustrations with the controls to taper off pretty quickly. Aside from that minor annoyance, I am loving this game. The atmosphere is just so unique and amazing and I can't wait to see where this game takes me. And damn that living world segment was so good, I can't stop thinking about it!

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Glad you're enjoying it! Just a small non-spoilery note - it was your rival Domino, not your boss Don, who told your driver he had the day off.

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Glad you're enjoying it! Just a small non-spoilery note - it was your rival Domino, not your boss Don, who told your driver he had the day off.

 

Ah, I see. Doesn't he have enough of an advantage over me though with all the good clients he gets? Two-faced bastard.

 

I played some more last night and managed to make another good chunk of progress. I was stuck for a bit at first but after re-examining several of the areas I discovered I could fill up my "dead worm" balloon with the foam packing chemicals that were used earlier for that Bruno(?) guy. I carried that around with me for a little while and then eventually discovered that I could shove the balloon into my message tube, forcing the chemical contents to be splattered all over the machine downstairs. It was obvious what I needed to do next so I went straight to the balloon guy to get another balloon, filled it up with the other chemical, and forced that into my message tube causing a big foam buildup that brought down the whole message tube system.

 

I went downstairs to investigate the damage I had caused to the messaging system and found a weird monster dude inside trying to fix the machine. I talked to him for a little bit and then locked the deadbolt on the open door which seemed like a good thing to do, especially considering Manny's comment about that being some kind of symbolic action. After realizing that there was nothing else I could do at this point, I left the room and right afterwards, the monster dude finished fixing the machine and took off without noticing that the door to the machine hadn't closed all the way because of the locked deadbolt. So I re-entered the room, opened the door to the machine, and went inside to try to figure out what I was supposed to do with the messaging tubes. From here it didn't take long for me to figure out that I could use my hole punched card in Domino's message tube to stop his next assignment from going through just long enough for me to read all the details and snag his client before he could get to her.

 

After obtaining this information, I witnessed a lengthy sequence where my big dog friend drove me to the client in my newly modded car and I was able to bring her back to my office to try to sell her a nice travel package. There ended up being some issue with her paperwork and she ended up taking off on her own as soon as I left the room to find out what was going on. At this point, Don had learned about what happened and pulled me into his office to bitch me out in front of Domino before locking me up in a cage while we waited for the police to come question me. Luckily, there was some dude outside of the cage that I was able to talk to and after a brief conversation, he let me out and brought me to some underground area so he could try to recruit me into his resistance group. As soon as we entered this area I stopped playing for the evening.

 

At this point I've managed to solve a couple puzzles and so far I am finding them to be pretty excellent. I'm sure there will be some bad ones to come but I'm pretty happy with that aspect of the game right now. Also, I am finding that the controls are becoming much more manageable as I've played more and they aren't really bothering me much at all any more. I can even get into most elevators on my first try now!

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Just in case it helps, your "big dog friend" (your driver Glottis) and the "weird monster dude" are demons, who in the context of Grim's universe have been summoned to the Eighth Underworld to perform the more mundane jobs like car mechanic and maintenance repairman.  While the humans are undergoing their four year journey of the soul with the goal of leaving the world, they hang around along with the souls who choose to make the eight underworld their permanent home.

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