Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Grim Fandango

filfre.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 129 posts

Re: Grim Fandango

#91

Post by moomin »

cousin_it wrote: post #38

> Taken as a game rather than the movie it often seems more interested in being It's interesting how movies today seem to be the "top" art form: there are books, comics, videogames that want to be movies, but never in the other direction. (There are books and games based on movies, but they are clearly secondary.) I wonder if there could be some other art form that would be "above" movies in this sense.

It’s funny, because movies still have the prestige television and games do not, despite both of them outstripping cinema in many ways. Movies have become increasingly global common denominator, with razor edge finances, and have ceded so much ground to TV it’s ridiculous.

An example of this: watch Kramer vs Kramer. It’s a great movie, with a big name cast telling an emotional story. Try to think of a more recent movie like it.

Re: Grim Fandango

#92

Post by [deleted] »

worthless-trash wrote: post #42
cousin_it wrote: post #38

> Taken as a game rather than the movie it often seems more interested in being It's interesting how movies today seem to be the "top" art form: there are books, comics, videogames that want to be movies, but never in the other direction. (There are books and games based on movies, but they are clearly secondary.) I wonder if there could be some other art form that would be "above" movies in this sense.

By top i assume you mean most profitable, I guess that movies are simply more accessible and cater to the lowest common denomination.

[deleted]

Re: Grim Fandango

#93

Post by sersi »

vvpan wrote: post #57

Well I certainly cannot relate to the criticism. I played the game early on as a teen (and every few years since) and while, at times difficult, I never thought the puzzles were "confusing", it seemed like a pretty organic combination of styles of puzzles built into the game. The head turning dynamics I have also found to be quiet pleasant as it made me relate to the character more. Not that criticism is bad but Grim…

As much as I love Jimmy Maher's articles, he has a certain bias against any adventure game that's not streamlined. So, he levels similar criticisms against pretty much every Sierra games, Full Throttle and pretty much any adventure game that is not polished to the level of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle.

He's not completely wrong and the tendency of adventure games to sometimes veer into puzzles that are more moon logic based did I think contribute to the fall of the genre but I do think that he overemphasizes those faults and has a tendency to describe puzzles that are merely hard as impossible to figure out.

Also, I disagree with his criticism of the interface, as a kid it definitely didn't bother me, if anything I find it less frustrating than the amount of pixel hunt in some adventure games.

Re: Grim Fandango

#94

Post by acomjean »

cainxinth wrote: post #85
vvpan wrote: post #57

Well I certainly cannot relate to the criticism. I played the game early on as a teen (and every few years since) and while, at times difficult, I never thought the puzzles were "confusing", it seemed like a pretty organic combination of styles of puzzles built into the game. The head turning dynamics I have also found to be quiet pleasant as it made me relate to the character more. Not that criticism is bad but Grim…

There was one particular puzzle involving an elevator that stumped me as a kid. I played the remaster years later and still couldn’t figure it out so I looked up the answer. Cheating in multiplayer games is obviously indefensible, but I’ve never been above cheating in a single player game. Games are a relaxing outlet for me and if I get frustrated long enough I’ll look up the solution. That said, I will have one of t…

Whenever I think of adventure games, it the being stuck aspect of it. When these were released the lack internet help made it frustrating.

Old man Murray (site is still up, though over 20 year since an update) had a good post about adventure game puzzles.

Page 2 and 3 sum up the frustration.

https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/78.html

Adventure games have gotten better..

Re: Grim Fandango

#95

Post by sersi »

makmanalp wrote: post #27
dale_glass wrote: post #3

I think one understated problem Grim Fandango had is that it's too adult. Today "adult" often means "there's sex and/or gore", but the content is still simple and juvenile. But Grim Fandango isn't like that, it's just full of themes that probably confused the heck out of almost every kid that tried to play it. Like the very first chapter throws you right into office politics. You deal with stealing a job from another…

Here's the thing - I remember playing it as a kid and so many things, arguably most of it, went way over my head: the whole travel agent thing and getting ahead in the office, dia de los muertos, the references to noir, the weird but gorgeous mexican art deco combo, I knew nothing about any of it. But I still loved every second of it. It made the world feel very rich and real even if I didn't fully get it, in a way t…

> I'm listening to a review of The Great Mouse Detective (1986) which has a similar ethos, as did other content targeting young people from that era.

You bring up a great point, I do feel sometimes that children media in the 80s didn't completely try to dumb down complexities of adult life even when targeting children. While there are exceptions, it does feel less true nowadays when looking at modern media. The problem I feel is that at the same time as we sanitize children' content more than we used too, children have more access to unfiltered content through often poorly secured devices.

As for Grim Fandango, I played it around 15 and while, yes there were elements that flew above my head. I still remember it as an amazing experience and my first introduction to the film noir genre (shortly after that was reinforced by playing Under a Killing Moon given to me by a friend of mine)

Re: Grim Fandango

#96

Post by dbalatero »

cainxinth wrote: post #85
vvpan wrote: post #57

Well I certainly cannot relate to the criticism. I played the game early on as a teen (and every few years since) and while, at times difficult, I never thought the puzzles were "confusing", it seemed like a pretty organic combination of styles of puzzles built into the game. The head turning dynamics I have also found to be quiet pleasant as it made me relate to the character more. Not that criticism is bad but Grim…

There was one particular puzzle involving an elevator that stumped me as a kid. I played the remaster years later and still couldn’t figure it out so I looked up the answer. Cheating in multiplayer games is obviously indefensible, but I’ve never been above cheating in a single player game. Games are a relaxing outlet for me and if I get frustrated long enough I’ll look up the solution. That said, I will have one of t…

The elevator forklift is one of the puzzles that messed me up too! I think it was the interface and really tight timing that made it tough.

Re: Grim Fandango

#97

Post by soulofmischief »

kylebenzle wrote: post #55
kevml wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great assessment that I never realized until you said it. There are so many games from that era that I played that fit that mold. I was playing Leisure Suit Larry as a 10 year old! I can’t imagine parents these days letting their kids play that at all!

In many cases lazy "single mothers" let kids use TicTok and SnapChat in lieu of a baby sitter or actually spending time with their own children these days. The things my kids have seen and knew before 6 years old was 1,000 times worse than anything in Leisure Suit Larry. Our daughter was repeating racial and sexual slurs she learned in the cheap "after-school" shes forced to attend. American parents or society doesn'…

Why is "single mothers" in quotes? I'm also confused because you generalize against single mothers for being lazy but then describe how your own parenting style is failing to meet your child's needs.

Re: Grim Fandango

#98

Post by kaashif »

praptak wrote: post #70
kaashif wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he just comes out and says ‘vehicle’ like it’s spelled What do you mean by this? In what what is "ve hicle" not pronouncing it as it's spelled but "ve icle" is? Isn't the one including an h more faithful?

I'm a non-native speaker I remember I couldn't figure out how to pronounce "vehicle" just from how it's spelled. It's not like I pronounced it wrong (as is often the case with other words), I just couldn't figure out how to pronounce it at all until I looked it up. Edit: I guess my point is that "as it's spelled" may be non obvious in case of vehicle.

That's partially my point too: pronouncing something "as it's spelled" is meaningless in English - most of the time there's more than one "obvious" pronunciation. And the right one could be a less obvious one.

Re: Grim Fandango

#99

Post by frmersdog »

Always worth mentioning: if you're a fan of Grim, The Journey Down is a game that borrows a LOT from it, while taking advantage of the advances made in the interim.

Re: Grim Fandango

#100

Post by dahart »

ucla_rob wrote: post #49
cousin_it wrote: post #38

> Taken as a game rather than the movie it often seems more interested in being It's interesting how movies today seem to be the "top" art form: there are books, comics, videogames that want to be movies, but never in the other direction. (There are books and games based on movies, but they are clearly secondary.) I wonder if there could be some other art form that would be "above" movies in this sense.

video games revenues are usually 5x those of video games. call movies 40bb per annum mobile games alone are ~100bb. Finish Him.

This is pretty misleading and 5x is totally wrong. You’re quoting the approximate box office number for film, but leaving out home entertainment (streaming & DVDs) and merchandising entirely, while at the same time including those categories on the games side. Film industry revenues as a whole when including streaming exceed $100B per year, and approximately matched the games industry, at least as of 5 years ago. See Wikipedia’s entries on film & game industries [1][2] — in 2018, film was $136B, while games was $135B. It’s only very very recently that total games revenue exceeded total film revenue. Making this much harder to reconcile is that total film revenues are generally not public information and they are notoriously misrepresented and downplayed, maybe to help reduce taxes, royalties, and bonuses, or maybe just for competitive reasons, but either way film numbers are unreliable and underestimated.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_industry

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_industry

Post reply on HN