GRIM FANDANGO

                   Played by Peter Clark

Something's rotten in the Land of the Dead and you, Manny Calvera,
are being taken as a sucker. You are a travel agent at the
Department of the Dead. Your job is to sell luxury packages to
souls on their four-year journey to eternal rest. There is,
however, trouble in paradise. Your job will be to help Manny
untangle himself from a conspiracy that threatens his very
salvation.

The game begins in Manny's Office. There has been a huge poisoning
and it is your job to get to the scene and sell some luxury to the
diseased.  Unfortunately, Domino, one of your colleagues gets away
first and you are left, as usual, without a car. Your first task
will be to get your boss to sign a work order. This will involve
finding a way into his office and fixing his computer. That done,
you are now able to go and look for a customer. Again, Domino has
beaten you to it and there are no good customers left. It's no
good; you will have to find a way of getting one of Domino's
customers from him. When you manage to do this, you discover that
her records have been tampered with and realise that the
Department of Death is corrupt. You set out to put things right.

Initially you will have to meet up with the underground resistance
and gain their trust. This will involve trapping some pigeons.
After some more adventures with the pigeons, you will find
yourself in another land. Glottis, your driver, will seem to meet
his death here and some surgery on your part is necessary to bring
him back. During this part of the game, there is a puzzle with
some pumps and a wheelbarrow. Although a fairly simple puzzle, I
found this to be very time consuming as the positioning of the
wheelbarrow is crucial. There are many other tasks to complete
here, including ridding the game of some red-hot beavers, before
you are able to visit Rubacava in the caf'.

The next task is to acquire yourself passage on a boat.  Captain
Valesco is your man and he can be found at the Docks. The first
year of the game finishes around here. In the next part, you
discover just what you need to get on the boat as one of the crew.
Your task will take you into several of the seedier establishments
of the town including the nightclubs and a cat-racing track. This
part of the game is very long and includes many tasks and puzzles
including the use of a forklift truck in a lift and a metal
detector to identify a corpse. When you have completed all the
tasks and collected all your needs, you will be permitted to board
the ship at the docks.

You are now in year three and your first job is to break the ship
in half. Seems strange, I know, but it is necessary. The next part
of the game takes place beneath the sea where you have to find a
submarine that will take you to the Edge of the World. Here, you
find yourself battling with the intricacies of conveyor belts and
cranes. Picking locks and draining water from rooms are just some
of your tasks here.

In the final part of the game, year four, your first task is to
cure Glottis who has become sick and to repair and improve your
car. The way that you must use to cross a booby-trapped floor was
quite stomach-turning.  Once you have sorted out the car you will
be returned to the part of the game where you began. This part
will involve you in getting a job in one of the nightclubs as one
of the Thunder Boys. You will also have to find your way past an
angry alligator before you can return to the club and confront the
Boss. After a chase across the rooftops you finally trap him in a
huge greenhouse and a few small puzzles later put an end to his
evil ways and finish the game.

I had heard that this was a very good game but did not play it
when it originally came out. Luckily I got a copy when it was
released as a budget title a few months ago. I can do nothing but
agree that this is one of the greats from Lucas Arts. Control is
again from the keyboard rather than the mouse but this did not
make the game any more difficult to play. The only grumble that I
have is that there is no printed manual with the budget version as
it is included on the CD. You must have Adobe to read it, however,
and the manual is far too long to print out unless you have plenty
of paper and ink to spare. This means that, to refer to manual,

you have to stop playing the game. I finished up printing out just
a few of the relevant pages.

I played Grim Fandango on a PC with a Pentium 3, 700Mhz chip using
Windows Me. I had no trouble with the running of the game but the
Uninstall crashed and I had to finish removing it manually. This
may have been a one- off but it was certainly a nuisance. I would
recommend anyone who hasn't played this game yet to go and give it
a try. I feel sure that you will not be disappointed.










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