This is definitely one of the biggest pluses of PC gaming for me: that as well as all the latest games I can also play games from back in the day. Want to go one better than that? If you’re like me you’ll probably remember your favourite games having crystal-clear graphics when you played them the first time. However, go back and look at them now, you’ll realise that unfortunately they look like something a half-blind chimp made out of Lego. Never fear though, we live in the era of the HD remake, so you can play them without having to slather Vaseline in your eyes to take the jaggy edges off.
THE GAME
You play as Manny Calavera: fast-talking travel agent to the dead, providing poor souls with options for traversing the Land of the Dead to get to the afterlife. Unfortunately for Manny, he has some karmic debts to pay off, so can’t move on himself. Even more unfortunately, he’s having a hard time of making any progress with his repayments, because the company for whom he works is corrupt to the core. He discovers this when he comes across Mercedes (Meche), a modern day saint who should be fast-tracked to the afterlife, but Manny can’t seem to do anything for her. He digs a little deeper and discovers that the corruption by his employers goes much higher. Meche is spirited away and Manny vows to rescue her.
The game draws inspiration from the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead in its character design, music and overall aesthetic. It’s a look that works for it. My theory is that the character design was made deliberately bold so that the characters could be made out on screen when the game first came out with the original crappy graphics (see mini-rant above). The characters transfer well to HD. There is an option to switch between the fancy new version and the original, for nostalgic purposes presumably. It shows just how far graphics have come since this game was released in 1998. The backgrounds are pre-rendered and don’t change with the HD makeover. This is a plus and a minus. They don’t benefit from the advances in graphical technology, but the plus is that the backgrounds were clearly rendered with love the first time around, and to change them would be change for change’s sake. Pre-rendered backgrounds are rare nowadays, but there is definitely something to be said for them. It gives a game the appearance of an interactive painting, and they are an art form in and of themselves. I can recall some of my favourite games from the 90s, such as the Resident Evil and Final Fantasy series, looking amazing because of their pre-rendered backgrounds, and in spite of their crappy character animations (even for the time).
In the HD version the characters are nothing special. They are an improvement on the original, no doubt, and they make the game playable to someone who has become used to crystal clear graphics, and who would be put off by having to revert to squinting and using ones imagination to work out what the hell is going on onscreen.
The game’s control system will make you wonder at times if your computer has been hacked and is being controlled remotely by a patient in a mental hospital, but that’s fine, the game rarely (although sometimes) requires quick movements. For the most part it’s a thinky-thinky-problemmy-solvey kind of game, but the times when it tries to be a quickly-quickly-do-the-thingy kind of game you might find yourself risking an aneurism. If your doctor has advised you that you are at a higher risk of brain bleeds than the general population then I would advise that you get someone to help you with the tar-swimming beavers puzzle.
Level design can likewise be a pain in buttcheeks. The game follows the tried and tested point and click puzzle-solving game archetype, but without the pointing and clicking. You explore your environments as Manny and investigate/pick up things that capture his attention. Exploration is key, and as with any puzzle game, solutions are not obvious. There’s no Doom-esque ‘blue key opens blue door’ nonsense here. Sometimes you collect things that are useless; other things have no immediate use; other things require to be used multiple times; and occasionally you can obtain more than one of a given item. There is much thinking outside of the box in this game, and you will not believe how many uses a collapsible scythe has.
HOW DOES IT RUN ON THE REASONABLE RIG?
Um yeah, the rig can handle this one.
VERDICT
Great game. Very simple to pick up, but devilishly complex in parts. Occasionally it will cause rage-quitting, but that’s ok. Sometimes a puzzle needs to be left alone for a bit before being re-attempted.
Recommended.
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