Every Lucasarts Adventure Game: Ranked Worst To Best

The games industry has taken repeated stabs at capturing the sleuthy, shadowy spirit of film noir, but none have done it quite like Grim Fandango, an art-deco adventure which begins with its principal cast already taking the big sleep.

Tim Schafer's career-making 1998 title sees you step into the cloak and brogues of Manny Calavera, a Grim Reaper/travel agent helping lost souls make their way across the Land of the Dead, as Lucasarts adventures likewise took their first steps into the third-dimension. It's a little awkward at first - Manny has the mobility of an actual corpse - but it's easy to forgive slight technical misgivings for the sake of an absolute aesthetic triumph.

Humphrey Bogart would lose his sh*t in the minutely realised world of Grim Fandango, asmog with the smoke of crepuscular cafés and corruption, set to the strains of Peter McConnell's stunning jazz soundtrack. The setting of the game's second act, Rubacava, is arguably the most richly atmospheric in gaming history, let alone an adventure. You'll feel legitimate remorse when the time comes to move on.

Maybe the four year journey from rags to redemption and back again starts to decompose somewhat around a third in, but make no bones about it: Grim Fandango, tragically a commercial failure, is up there amongst the best games ever made. Like its central character, Grim's true worth has only been realised long after being put out to pasture.