I disagree. The engine has flaws for sure, but it did well enough critically at the time and Grim is beloved today.
LucasArts stopped making adventure games because the market dried up and they wanted to move on to more profitable genres. 2D games were considered old hat at that point, and I’ve little doubt that if they hadn’t swapped to a 3D engine they wouldn’t have been allowed to make Grim Fandango at all.
Ooof, now there’s a hot take I don’t agree with. Did you play Psychonauts (1 and 2)? Full Throttle? Brutal Legend? Man, those are some of my favorite games.
Psychonauts was what made me come to that realisation. The dialogue and cutscenes were great; the gameplay sucked. Full Throttle’s game design was mostly inherited from Ron Gilbert and the areas where Schaeffer did his own thing (the minigames) were the worst parts. I haven’t played Brutal Legend but I haven’t heard anything positive about its gameplay.
That engine was a disaster and was responsible for the death of LucasArts’ adventure games.
I disagree. The engine has flaws for sure, but it did well enough critically at the time and Grim is beloved today.
LucasArts stopped making adventure games because the market dried up and they wanted to move on to more profitable genres. 2D games were considered old hat at that point, and I’ve little doubt that if they hadn’t swapped to a 3D engine they wouldn’t have been allowed to make Grim Fandango at all.
Tim Schaefer was a decent writer but he absolutely sucked at game design.
Ooof, now there’s a hot take I don’t agree with. Did you play Psychonauts (1 and 2)? Full Throttle? Brutal Legend? Man, those are some of my favorite games.
Psychonauts was what made me come to that realisation. The dialogue and cutscenes were great; the gameplay sucked. Full Throttle’s game design was mostly inherited from Ron Gilbert and the areas where Schaeffer did his own thing (the minigames) were the worst parts. I haven’t played Brutal Legend but I haven’t heard anything positive about its gameplay.
I played it for the first time in the mid 2000s and I thought it was fine, but I generally have tolerance for that kind of thing.