Grim Fandango (1998)

Grim Fandango is still great, obviously. Really funny, well acted, great writing, music is gorgeous.
I put the rendering back to original mode because when you put super-sharp hi-res models on top of the old backgrounds, suddenly the backgrounds look really crappy. With the old pixelly models next to them, they look nice and crisp and detailed! That fixed, everything looks lovely and the art design is great. Especially next to an abomination like Sanitarium. Looking at some comparison videos, it seems like they also brightened the backgrounds up, reduced the contrast, which lets you see more detail but flattens them out a fair bit. That's a shame if so.
(I also went back to tank controls because I was finding the camera-relative controls a bit confusing, for some reason. Perhaps because I've played the original version so many times.)
There are a couple of other little annoyances with the remaster, like how they've slapped UI on top of certain views when the entire design is based around having no UI at all (except dialogue trees - they never solved that one). 

Having looked into it a little further, the backgrounds definitely did get brightened a little. The new music also gets a bit overcooked at times, they put too many new horns in and it gets overbearing. Mostly in the cutscenes where you only have an overall volume setting rather than the discrete voice/music/sfx ones. So overall, I think the original is definitely the superior version. Unfortunately, I don't have my discs with me, so I'll have to stick with RM.

Got to year 2. I always forget how big this game is and how tough the puzzles can get. It's not that they're unfair exactly, but certain information only gets conveyed once or has to be inferred. It probably reaches the same height of difficulty as MI2. And after all the little contained chunks of puzzle you get in Year 1 - get to the poisoning; get a better lead; get the LSA to help you escape; escape the forest; get a job at the automat - which in itself goes on for a while, you suddenly get this absolutely huge map to navigate and find the many many different puzzle threads in, it's wild. I've played through this game many times and I still can't just solve it on autopilot like I can with DOTT, S&M etc. 

Finally got back to this game! I'm just about to get to El Marrow for the final section (iirc). This game is huge, it's incredibly impressive. It's fun how after Year 2 it goes back into smaller chunks again, and lets you manipulate and destroy loads of big stuff. They really make use of the 3D. There are a few more puzzles with fairly ropey signposting and even some locations which are hard to notice, though. A few more lines of dialogue could have fixed them, bit of a shame.

Unfortunately, the game crashed on me at the end of a cutscene so I've got to replay about 5 minutes worth. I swear this remaster is buggier than the original was (or even is via SCUMMVM now), with more weird navigation and music bugs, stuff like that. Taking that and the out of place UI stuff and some bad music balancing, I think the original is still the better option. I had to turn off the hi-res models because they made the backgrounds look bad, the new bits of live music recording don't sound that much better to my ears, so the only benefits are the special features, which you can probably find elsewhere (the commentary is half interesting half waffle, the concept art is gorgeous, and iirc the making-of doc is good too).

Finished! It stays great all the way up to the end, and that finale where they have a great big action sequence jumping over rooftops but then pare it down to just a greenhouse in a meadow of flowers against a night sky is masterful. Excellent game, the only issues are some dodgy signposting and some bugginess which may or may not be Remastered edition only. I'd actually be very interested to see a remake of this where they recreate it in Unreal 5 or whatever so the entire thing is super hi-def and all proper 3D lighting and effects and stuff, but they make it as faithful as possible to the original.

Rating: Stunning.